credited to such a comprehensive system of industrial insurance.

In the field of industrial insurance European precedents have thus far had little weight in the United States, where there is still a strong prejudice in favor of self-dependence in all such matters. It is argued that each individual should accept the risks of his special occupation or insure himself against them through private industrial insurance companies, and that only in this way can the spirit of selfhelp and self-reliance, upon which our advancing civilization so largely depends, be kept alive. The obvious reply to this reasoning is that in practice workmen underestimate the risks to which they are exposed and fail to insure themselves against them. The consequence is that when accidents befall them their families are only too apt to be left without adequate provision and to become dependents upon public or private charity. In the opinion of the author a plan by which compensation for industrial accidents is made one of the conditions of the labor contract tends on the whole to promote self-reliance and independence among the working classes rather than otherwise, because it reduces the amount of enforced dependency. If this view is correct the United States should lose no time in introducing some method for the compulsory indemnification of the victims of industrial accidents.

182. Conclusion. The subject of the legal regulation of labor is one of great complexity. Up to the present time a priori objections to such regulations have delayed their introduction, and only gradually, as experience has demonstrated their usefulness, have they been extended to situations which seem to require them. In the United States the notion that the legislative power should not be used to regulate hours and conditions of employment has been abandoned by most thoughtful persons, but the prejudice against any interference with wages, like that practised in New Zealand and Australia, remains nearly as strong as

ever. There is, of course, good ground for this distinction. Hours and other conditions of employment affect directly the health and vigor of the working classes; wages only indirectly. Moreover, workmen are less mindful of their own interest in connection with hours and sanitary arrangements than in connection with wages. Making all allowance for these considerations, many thoughtful persons still believe that, under certain circumstances, notably those found in connection with the sweating system, the regulation of wages must also be undertaken by the government if serious evils are to be corrected. It is sometimes argued that the law cannot fix the rate of wages, but this is contrary both to reason and experience. The law cannot fix both wages and the number of persons who shall be employed at those wages, but it can declare that no one shall be employed in given trades unless paid certain minimum wages, and enforce its decree. The result may be an addition to the number of dependents, who are "unemployable" at the wages fixed because too inefficient to earn them, but it may be better and cheaper for society to support such persons in some other way than to permit their competition to hold the wages of great sections of the population down to a starvation level. In order to mark off the dependent from other classes the state may find it necessary itself to fix a standard by which the ability of the individual for independent self-support may be determined. Without desiring to advocate the establishment by law of standard or minimum rates of wages for the sweating trades, the author wishes to insist that there would be nothing in this policy inconsistent with the theory of wages that has been explained in these pages, and that it merits the same unprejudiced consideration as is now accorded by intelligent people to proposals for restricting the employment of children or women, or for requiring the use of safety appliances in connection with dangerous trades.

In the United States a serious obstacle to the progress of labor legislation has been the inability of State legislatures to agree upon uniform laws. Massachusetts has held an honorable place as a leader in factory legislation, but of late years proposals for a further restriction of hours have been met there with the objection that the cotton mills of the State were already carrying on a losing battle against the cotton mills of the South, which have been free from all but the mildest labor restrictions. Exaggerated as this objection often is, it points to the need of uniform labor laws, at least for neighboring States, and suggests the desirability of national labor legislation. Massachusetts, the State which from its position of leadership has most keenly felt the absence of uniformity, adopted, in 1902, a concurrent resolution favoring an amendment to the United States Constitution which should empower Congress to enact uniform labor laws for the whole country. Another movement in the same direction. was the creation, in 1883, of the Association of Officials of Bureaus of Labor of America, which has worked earnestly to secure uniformity in the factory regulations of the different States. The progress towards uniformity that has been made encourages the hope that its absence may be less of a bar to improved labor regulations in the future than it has been in the past.

REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL READING

The literature bearing on labor regulations is of a somewhat technical character. *Stimson, Handbook to the Labor Laws, is the standard work for the United States. More exhaustive is the Report of the United States Bureau of Labor on Labor Laws in the United States, which is brought down to date by the Bulletins of Labor of the same Bureau. Volumes V. and XVI. of the Report of the United States Industrial Commission contain digests of the labor laws of the United States and of foreign countries. Discussions of the history and effects of labor legislation will be found in North, Factory Legislation in New England (against) and Whittelsey, Massachusetts Labor Legislation (for). A good statement of the argu

ments for child-labor laws is given in Murphy, The Case Against Child Labor and The South and Her Children. The Handbook on Child Labor Laws, published each year by the National Consumers' League, gives the latest statutes. Other references are given in *Marot, A Handbook of Labor Literature.

The history of labor legislation in Great Britain is treated in von Plener, English Factory Legislation (1876), and * Hutchins and Harrison, A History of Factory Legislation (1903). The laws now in force are given in Abraham and Burrows, The Law Relating to Factories and Workshops (1908). The best books dealing with special Mrs. Webb, The Case for the Factory Acts; topics are: * Black, Sweated Industry; * Willoughby, Workingmen's Insurance.

CHAPTER XX

LEGAL AND NATURAL MONOPOLIES

183. Importance of the Monopoly Problem.-As explained in Chapter IX. the essence of monopoly is such control over the supply of an economic good as enables the monopolist to regulate its price. In Chapter XVIII. we considered cases of such control exercised by trade unions and designed to enhance wages or the price of labor. Much more common and also more detrimental to general well-being are monopolies which consist in control over the supplies of commodities. Such monopolies have it in their power in greater or less degree to compel the public to pay regularly and continuously for the commodities they control higher prices than are needed to cover the expenses of their production, including a fair wages of management. This power is not unlike the power to tax which is exercised by the state itself. By its means the favored few who control monopolistic enterprises derive monopoly profits at the expense of the many. The magnitude of these profits, which under a system of free, all-sided competition would be diffused throughout the community in the form of cheaper commodities, is one circumstance that lends an interest to the monopoly problem. Another and equally important circumstance is the manifest injustice involved in permitting a few persons to enjoy incomes from which the many are debarred. For these and other reasons the monopoly problem is one of the most important practical questions with which economics has to deal. In the following sections the principal types of monopolies that are found in the United States, the grounds on which they