I conclude that the raising of wages is not a
self-defeating process, though it is not free from
practical difficulties. The most serious of these
difficulties is that the full economic profit of high
wages is not immediate. A given individual is
not immediately able to produce twice as much
because his wages are suddenly doubled. The
full effect will not be felt for a generation. An
ill-paid workman has ill-fed and ill-educated
children, and is the correlative of a driving and
oppressive employer. The full effects of an im-
provement in his conditions are many-sided and
gradual. They will come out partly in his own
lifetime, more fully in that of his children. They
will appear partly in the improvement in his own
work, partly in the improvement of methods of
business management, and in an actual change in
the character of employers. The prevention of
underpayment eliminates from the ranks of em-
ployers the men who, whether from incompetence
or from other defects, are only able to keep their
heads above water by employing low-grade labour
at an inadequate rate of wages.
The indirect value of Trade Unionism to indus-
trial production as a whole is now very commonly
recognised by the most enlightened employers, and
I gladly reproduce a passage quoted in the first



54 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT

edition of this book from an article by Mr. (now
Sir .William) Mather as expressing opinions rarer
then than now.
" We employers owe more than, as a body, we are inclined to
admit to the improvements in our methods of manufacture, due
to the firmness and independence of trade combinations. Our
industrial steadiness and enterprise are the envy of the world.
