Although Mill rejected the wages fund doctrine in his 1869 review of Thornton’s book,
the seventh edition of his Principles, published in 1871, made no changes on this score,
because Mill maintained that these new developments “are not yet ripe for incorporation
in a general treatise on Political Economy.”26 This is quite puzzling, for in 1862, in the
fifth edition of his Principles, Mill had already concluded that wage rates depended on the
bargaining power of the employer and employee and that one important way for labor to
increase its power was through unionization.27 This inconsistency is simply another example
of Mill’s attempts to stay within the general framework of classical economics, which he
learned at a young age from his father, while giving vent to his humanistic feelings, which
called for social reform centering around a more equal distribution of income.