Most attempts, furthermore, to settle wage disputes by the use of defined principles have resulted in an incoherence of policy due to the necessity of bowing to the facts of force. This interference of force and the consequent disturbance of policy is likewise to be expected in all future attempts. For, in all human affairs private interest will, on favorable occasions, revolt against laws or rules which restrain it.
Again, in the United States all past attempts to settle wage disputes by reference to principles have been isolated and sporadic. They have, therefore, been virtually foredoomed to failure. For as will be made clearer as we progress, any successful attempt to base wage settlements upon principles will demand the consistent and courageous application of these principles for a not inconsiderable period, and to all important industries alike. Otherwise compromise and a search for any way out of the immediate crisis is the only possible principle of settlement. Any well-conceived policy of wage settlement must have regard for a far wider set of forces and facts than are presented by any single controversy. The objects of any policy could only be attained through a long series of decisions ranging throughout the field of industry, and related to each other. This, it is trusted, will become plain as the difficulties of formulating policy are discussed.
3.—Prof. Marshall in his great book has an arresting passage on the importance of the tendency to organization which characterizes the whole field of industry. He writes: "This is not a fitting place for a study of the causes and effects of trade combinations and of alliances and counter alliances among the employers and employed, as well as among traders and manufacturers. They present a succession of picturesque incidents and romantic transformations which arrest public attention and seem to indicate a coming change of our social arrangements now in one direction and now in another; and their importance is certainly great and grows rapidly. But it is apt to be exaggerated; for indeed many of them are little more than eddies such as have always flitted over the surface of progress. And though they are on a larger and more imposing scale in this modern age than before; yet now, as ever, the main body of the movement depends on the deep, silent, strong stream of the tendencies of normal distribution and exchange which 'are not seen' but which control the course of those episodes which 'are seen.' For even in conciliation and arbitration the central difficulty is to discover what is the normal level from which the decisions of the court must not depart far under penalty of destroying their own authority."[2]
Writing in England in 1920, it seems to me as if the events of change in England were more than the surface movements he speaks of, and that slowly but definitely industrial arrangements are undergoing modification so as to give scope to new energies and ideas which will modify the "normal" distribution and exchange as he conceived it. The future in the United States is even less clearly marked. There too new purposes and claims are arising and will seek adjustment with established arrangements.
The attitude of all those who really desire industrial peace must be that of readiness to judge such forces of change as may become active, by the balance of good or harm they seem to promise. For that is the attitude which alone can make possible a fusion of the conservatism of experience and of established interest, and the radicalism of hope and desire—by which fusion society can experience peaceful development.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "New York Harbor Wage Adjustment," B. M. Squires, Monthly Review of the U. S. Department of Labor, Sept., 1918, page 19.
[2] A. Marshall, "Principles of Economics," 7th Edition, page 628.