We may now tabulate our conclusions.
1. In the making of the wages contract the individual laborer is at a disadvantage. He has something which he must sell and which his employer is not obliged to take, since he can reject single men with impunity.
2. A period of idleness may increase this disability to any extent. The vender of anything which must be sold at once is like a starving man pawning his coat—he must take whatever is offered.
3. Collective bargaining enables men to withhold, for a time, something which is of importance to an employer. He cannot let them all go with impunity.
4. A strike is a contest of endurance; and if it continues until the men are exhausted, they are collectively in the position of the hungry individual seller, who is at the buyer's mercy. The wages they then take may be far below the natural standard.
5. If their places are filled at once by men who are already thus necessitous, the resulting rate may be equally below the natural standard.
6. The power of the union often depends on its use of force in keeping the needy out of its field.
7. The rate of pay gained where compulsion is freely and successfully practiced is above the normal rate.
8. Conciliation does little in the way of changing the results which are realized without it, but it lessens the frequency of strikes.
9. Arbitration by a court, which must make a decision but cannot enforce it—by a court which confirms the workmen's tenure of place while action is pending and declares it forfeited if the men reject its decree,—such arbitration would secure a closer conformity to the normal standard of wages than any other action. It would establish rates which give the workmen the benefit of every legitimate advantage from collective bargaining.