industry. Their view appears to be122 that two combinations might, without resorting to actual
competition, agree to accept those terms which would probably result from the play of free
competition. In playing this sort of Kriegspiel, it might be laid down as a rule of civilised industrial
warfare that the workman should not be treated as living from hand to mouth. Suppose him freed
from the imminence of starvation for a time at least, and then consider what sort of arrangement of
the terms to be settled would constitute a steady flow of the type above described, in which each
individual's final sacrifice is normally equivalent to the final utility which he procures thereby.123
Other rules might be suggested for the working of such imaginary competition.124 But it may be
questioned whether the method admits of precision, for a reason urged by Fir. L. L. Price with
reference to a proposed principle of arbitration, “that the arbitrator should endeavour to award such
wages as would be attained if combination on either side were absent.” “Where is the arbitrator to
discover this ideal standard?“ pertinently asks Mr. Price.125
The terms forming the subject of a collective treaty would be settled by a method essentially
different from competition. For instance, in the case above proposed, the length of a working day,
let there be a law removing this article from the category of terms which are to be settled by the play
of competition between individuals. Those who hold that such a law is based on the utilitarian first
principle, the greatest happiness of those concerned,—here the citizens who have enacted the
law,—will be prepared for the further suggestion that the particular number of hours to be settled
will also be regulated by the utilitarian first principle, only that those concerned, whose maximum
advantage constitutes the criterion, are not now the citizens,—if the citizens generally have no
interest in the particular number of hours in the trade,— but only the parties to the distribution, the
members of the contracting combination. That this undergrowth of utilitarianism may, like the parent
tree, prove fruitful, has been argued elsewhere.126 Here it need only be repeated that, when the
122 It is difficult to attach any other interpretation to Walker's dicta referred to above. He is
presumably supposing that all the terms of contract are settled by ideal competition, a limiting case
of the regime here suggested that some of the terms should be settled by competition, actual or
imaginary.
123. The “method of mutual insurance” practiced by trade unions, according to Mr. and Mrs. Webb
(Industrial Democracy), seems to confer this sort of advantage on its members.
124. E. g. in order to estimate that result, it might be thought consonant to the amount of industrial
solidarity actually existing not to treat each individual workman as an economic atom, but rather to
suppose comparatively few independent bodies, each formed by the solidification of many individual
atoms. Compare T. J. Dunning, Trade Unions and Strikes (a work mentioned by J. S. Mill with
approval), p. 21, where reply is made to the question, “Why cannot a man sell his labour for what
he likes, as a shopkeeper tickets his goods under the price of those of his neighbour?” “The
shopkeepers,” replies Dunning, “are not obliged to be always together.” “But the matter assumes a
very different aspect” in the case of wage-earners who work together. Though, as will presently
appear, a preliminary use of the sort of potential competition which has just been described may be
required.
125. Economic Science and Practice, p. 198 and context.
126. Mathematical Psychics, p. 53.