no more than the least able, and spoiling the aggregate wealth of
society by burdensome regulations restricting labor. Logically, to the
Trades-Union leaders the Chicago or Boston fire seemed a more beneficial
event than the invention of the steam-engine; for plenty seems to them a
curse, and scarcity the greatest blessing. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy
footnote relocated to chapter end.]

Any organization which teaches its adherents to accept as inevitable for
themselves and for the mass of a nation the condition of hirelings, and
to conduct their lives on that premise, is not only wrong, but an injury
to the community. Mr. Mill wisely says on this point, in his chapter on
"The Future of the Laboring Classes": "There can be little doubt that
the _status_ of hired laborers will gradually tend to confine itself
to the description of work-people whose low moral qualities render them
unfit for any thing more independent; and that the relation of masters
and work-people will be gradually superseded by partnership in one of
two forms: in some cases, association of the laborers with the
capitalist; in others, and perhaps finally in all, association of
laborers among themselves." I imagine that the change he speaks of will
be very slow and gradual; but it is important that all doors shall be
left open for it, and Trades-Unions would close every door.

Professor Cairnes, in his recent contribution to Political Economy, goes
further even than Mr. Mill, and argues that a change of this nature is
inevitable. He remarks: "The modifications which occur in the
distribution of capital among its several departments, as nations
advance, are by no means fortuitous, but follow on the whole a
well-defined course, and move toward a determinate goal. In effect, what
we find is a constant growth of the national capital, accompanied with a
nearly equally constant decline in the proportion of this capital which