foresight, but have plodded along and waited for the slow and
successive action of the industrial system through successive periods
of production, while the employer has anticipated and synchronized
several successive steps. No bargain is fairly made if one of the
parties to it fails to maintain his interest. If one party to a
contract is well informed and the other ill informed, the former is
sure to win an advantage. No doctrine that a true adjustment of
interest follows from the free play of interests can be construed to
mean that an interest which is neglected will get its rights.

The employés have no means of information which is as good and
legitimate as association, and it is fair and necessary that their
action should be united in behalf of their interests. They are not in a
position for the unrestricted development of individualism in regard to
many of their interests. Unquestionably the better ones lose by this,
and the development of individualism is to be looked forward to and
hoped for as a great gain. In the meantime the labor market, in which
wages are fixed, cannot reach fair adjustments unless the interest of
the laborers is fairly defended, and that cannot, perhaps, yet be done
without associations of laborers. No newspapers yet report the labor
market. If they give any notices of it--of its rise and fall, of its
variations in different districts and in different trades--such notices
are always made for the interest of the employers. Re-distribution of
employés, both locally and trade-wise (so far as the latter is
possible), is a legitimate and useful mode of raising wages. The
illegitimate attempt to raise wages by limiting the number of
apprentices is the great abuse of trades-unions. I shall discuss that
in the ninth chapter.

It appears that the English trades were forced to contend, during the