choose to be so reckless as to raise its prices to a point where its published reports will show it to be making enormous profits, thus tempting new competitors to enter the field and breeding public hostility, all honest protectionists and free-traders will be quite apt to unite in a demand that the "protection" under which this monopoly is permitted to tax the public be taken away.
If only we could find in any possible plan so excellent a solution of the problem of labor monopolies as a reduction of the tariff offers us in the case of trusts! The question is so complex a one that it is hardly possible to consider it here, except very briefly. Certainly, if we legalize combinations to restrict competition among capitalists, we should among laborers as well. Indeed, the decay of the old common-law principle, that such contracts were against public policy, and that such combinations were punishable, has been more marked in the case of trade unions than anywhere else. Besides this, as long as employers have the right to kill competition in the purchase of labor, workmen should certainly have the right to avoid competition in its sale. But to prevent by force other competitors from taking the field, if they choose, against any labor combination, is an infringement of the personal liberty guaranteed to every man by the Constitution, and can by no means be lawfully permitted.