The worst thing that a labor union can do for
its members in the long run is to limit the amount of work which they
allow each workman to do in a day. If their employers are in a
competitive business, sooner or later those competitors whose workmen do
not limit the output will take the trade away from them, and they will
be thrown out of work. And in the meantime the small day's work which
they have accustomed themselves to do demoralizes them, and instead of
developing as men do when they use their strength and faculties to the
utmost, and as men should do from year to year, they grow lazy, spend
much of their time pitying themselves, and are less able to compete with
other men. Forbidding their members to do more than a given amount of
work in a day has been the greatest mistake made by the English trades
unions. The whole of that country is suffering more or less from this
error now. Their workmen are for this reason receiving lower wages than
they might get, and in many cases the men, under the influence of this
idea, have grown so slow that they would find it difficult to do a good
day's work even if public opinion encouraged them in it.
In forcing their members to work slowly they use certain cant phrases
which sound most plausible until their real meaning is analyzed. They
continually use the expression, "Workmen should not be asked to do more
than a fair day's work," which sounds right and just until we come to
see how it is applied.
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