Note 177-8 — Chapter III

In Switzerland, the trades-unions have shown themselves very powerful against the employers of tradesmen, but rather powerless against manufacturing employers, and thus materially increased the already existing inferiority of the former. (Böhmert, II, 401.) They may, however, by further successful development, constitute the basis of a new smaller middle class, similar to the tradesmen's[TN 17] guilds at the end of the middle ages; and indeed by a new exclusiveness, in a downward direction. This would be a bulwark against the destructive inroads of socialism similar to that which the freed peasantry in France were and still are. While this is also Brentano's view, R. Meyer, Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, 1874, I, 254 ff., calls the trades-unions a practical preparation for socialism to which the English "morally went over" in 1869 (I, 751); which indeed loses much of the appearance of truth from the fact that Marx (Brentano, Arbeitergilden, II, 332) and the disciples of Lassalle (Meyer, I, 312) hold the trades-unions in contempt. John Stuart Mill approves of all trades-unions that seek to effect the better remuneration of labor, and opposes all which would bring the wages paid for good work and bad work to the same level. (Principles, II, ch. 14, 6; V, ch. 10, 5.) Compare Tooke, History of Prices, VI, 176. Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Organization and Rules of Trades-Unions, 1857.