But will not Prices rise and Demand fall off?

Not unless the total national production falls off; and this, we have seen, is not likely to happen. As regards purchasing power,. what the capitalists may lose in profits the workers will gain in wages. Even if it should happen that here and there three fashionable ladies spend less on their caprices while thirty artizans spend more on their comforts, the "market" would be none the worse for that; and the country would be much the better for it, whatever the three fashionable ladies might think. If, in the aggregate,. production and demand are not altered, there is no reason why prices generally should rise or fall. Some prices may go up, while others go down, as they are doing every day from changes of fashion, commercial panics, and one cause or another.

Thorold Rogers said : "No one believes that if the London seamstresses, tailors, and matchbox-makers received double the wages which they do at present, there would be an appreciable difference in the price of the products sold, or any present risk that any of those industries would cease to be plied in this country"—Work and Wages (abridged edition), p. 203.