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share of the joint product, appealing, not to any scientific crite- rion, but to "the law of supply and demand" as expressed by the haggling of the supposedly free market.
Now, what is a free market ? At one time the Manchester school of economists took the ground that a free market implied unrestricted individual competition both among capitalists and among wage-workers. Collective bargaining, even when abso- lutely free from the slightest coercion, was condemned as a violation of industrial freedom. Each employer was held to be bound to deal with labor as an individual : he was sternly forbidden to consult and agree with other employers as to the wages he should offer, the length of his working day, and the sanitary conditions of his shop. Such an agreement was deemed a conspiracy against labor. Each employee, similarly, was told that he had no right to enter into any combination for the purpose of extort- ing better terms than employers were under the necessity of pro- posing to competing individual workmen.
But this illogical and shallow view has been abandoned. All economists andall thinking men will accept the following definition of a "free market": a condition under which the wages of labor and the return to capital are determined by the play of non- invasive forces and economic factors. This definition compre- hends combinations of capitalists and of laborers to control or affect wages. It is absurd to say that the rights of the capitalist are infringed upon when five (or five hundred, or five thousand) employees confront him in the market as a unit ; and it is equally absurd to contend that the freedom of the workman is invaded when the capitalists act together in engaging their help.
But the market is not free when workmen say to some or all capitalists: "If you refuse to employ us on our terms, no one else shall be permitted to work for you." Violence is invasion ; intimidation is invasion ; and the market is not free when either side yields, not to economic necessity, but to physical force or threats of such force. It is not always easy to draw the line, however, between the exercise of equal liberty and the exercise of improper compulsion or tyranny. Where, in the industrial field, does invasion begin ?
