_The Power of Monopolistic Trade Unions under Different Conditions._--Arbitrators have to deal with trade unions which appeal to some kind of force in defending their right of possession of a field of labor. They make their own demands, strike, and compel rivals to stay out of the positions they vacate. When this policy is tolerated, they secure an exceptionally high rate of pay.
We may represent the product of labor and its pay in the different occupations by the accompanying diagram.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The heavy line _AA"_ represents, by its height at different points above the base line _EE"_, the product that is specifically imputable to labor in different employments. The part of the figure where the line is far above _EE"_ represents the condition where, on the employers" side, monopolies are established; while on the right of the figure, where the line has descended and is slowly approaching the base, the condition is represented in which employers are competing with each other, and many of them are selling their products at prices that only cover the cost of creating them. A unit of labor working for a monopoly creates as large a physical product as it does elsewhere.
It turns out as many tons of steel or cases of cloth, etc., as though no monopoly existed, and the price of the goods is high because less labor is employed than would be employed under compet.i.tion and fewer goods are produced. The actual product of the unit of labor, as measured in dollars, is enhanced by the employers" monopoly. _BB"_ represents, by its varying distance above _EE"_, what organized labor can get under the different conditions. On the left it forces the trusts to share gains with it, and gets a high rate of pay; while on the right, where employers are not in combination and there are no such great gains to draw on, it gets less, although at the extreme right it gets all that it produces. _DD"_ represents what unorganized labor can get under the different conditions, and it is usually somewhat more where trusts employ it than it is elsewhere. The dotted line _CC"_ represents the product of labor as it would be if it were equalized in the different fields.
_The Parties interested in a Dispute in which Both Labor and Capital are Organized._--We can best deal with the problem of the adjustment of wages by arbitration if we approach it in a region where organization is strong, both on the side of labor and on that of capital, and disturbances of the natural system are greatest. The struggle that here goes on is, in a way, triangular. Organized labor contends against its own employers, on the one hand, and against unorganized labor, on the other; and the part which develops the greatest bitterness of feeling and the most violence is the strife between labor and labor--between the trade unionists who strike and the men who attempt to occupy their positions. The union is more tolerant of the employer"s action in driving a hard bargain than it is of the "scab"s" action in "taking another man"s job."
_The Public a Fourth Party in the Case._--The three parties just named--employers, organized employees, and applicants for places--are not the only parties whom the dispute affects. The public has a vital relation to it, and in a true sense its interest and rights are supreme. The public has a right to demand that production should not be interrupted, and that the supply of necessary articles should not be cut off; and it is in line with this demand that arbitrators seek first for an award that the contending parties will be willing to accept.
_Two Issues needing Settlement._--In the immediate contest over the adjustment of pay, the three parties first named are the ones primarily involved. In discharging its duty as the preserver of justice, the court finds two issues which need to be settled rightly.
The dispute between _entrepreneurs_ and workmen must be rightly adjusted, and the issue between the workmen and other labor must be so. The power of the state cannot properly be used (1) to force from employers more than they can afford to give, or (2) to exclude from any field of employment free laborers who are able and willing to do the required work. Arbitrators make their awards with an eye to conditions within the business and to the state of the labor market.
Instinctively an arbitrator, in trying to satisfy his sense of justice, thinks first of the amount that the business yields. The men must not take the whole income from the business, leaving to the _entrepreneur_ nothing wherewith to meet the claim for interest.
Without doing this, however, they may ask for much more than other laborers will accept, and the question arises whether this should be conceded to them. In merely putting the relation of workmen to employers on a proper footing, the tribunal may leave the relation of the strikers to other workmen as unsatisfactory as it has been. It appears that the tribunal of arbitration cannot by one act settle the two issues that are presented to it. If it gives to the men what seems like a fair share of the product of the business which employs them, it gives more than most workers get and more than the law of final productivity of labor would afford. Yet without a ruthless cutting down of the pay of favored laborers it cannot apply the standard of final social productivity of labor. If it applies this standard and cuts down the men"s actual pay, they will refuse to abide by the decision; and if it tries to obtain a power of compulsion and make the men accept its decisions, they will try--probably successfully--to defeat the attempt. A system of compulsory arbitration that should go to the length of forcibly equalizing the wages paid to men of like ability in different occupations, would not be tolerated in a democratic community.
_The Difficulty of Applying the Test of Final Productivity._--The law of final productivity works most efficiently when it works automatically, as it does when competing employers make the best bargains they can with locally organized laborers. The results, then, approach the theoretical standard, though they do not entirely coincide with it. The law, however, cannot be rigorously applied by a tribunal which is fixing a rate of pay by its own conscious act. How can the judges directly ascertain how much a final increment of social labor produces?
Employers, indeed, do make such tests. An estimate of how much a few additional laborers would add to the product of a business often has, in some way, to be made, and employers manage to make it; but subsequent experience is necessary for verifying their judgment. A rule of pay, governed by marginal productivity, results from the action spontaneously taken by a myriad of employers, who enlarge their working forces when they find that they gain thereby, and reduce them when they lose. Of course no court could do anything of this kind. No department of industry will turn itself into a laboratory for testing the productive power of labor. It is clear that the procedure must be much simpler and cruder; and a vital question is whether a board of arbitration, proceeding as it must do, is under any influence that impels it to render decisions which, in any degree, conform to the theoretical standard of pay. Does the economic law of wages operate at all when civil law steps in to the extent of creating any tribunal of arbitration? We shall see.
_The Necessity for Some Standard on which Arbitrators may base Awards._--When a board of arbitration tries to do anything more than to end a quarrel, it must seek for some principle of justice. If it is dealing with a favored cla.s.s of laborers, it finds two extreme limits between which its awards must fall, namely (1) the product which the business yields in excess of simple interest on the capital, and (2) the wages that unorganized laborers may offer to accept. It is possible that the workmen may demand the former amount and the employers may offer the latter; and if so, compromising is a rule-of-thumb mode of doing justice. In the case of a strong union and a highly profitable business the employers may offer more than the minimum amount, and the award that is a compromise between the terms of the contending parties will then be well above that which is a fair mean between the possible extremes; yet it does not appear that it really conforms to any ethical principle.
_Average Wages as a Standard._--Another possible basis of an award is the average rate of wages prevailing; but it has no claim as a standard of exact justice and is very far from being workable. Wages vary from a very high rate to a very low one; and the highest rate is that which prevails where a trade union which is strong enough to keep men out of its field of employment deals with a trust which is strong enough to keep rival producers out of its field of business. Under such conditions shall a court average this rate and a very low one, and reason that a mean thus arrived at is a legitimate standard of pay or one that would be realized if no monopolies existed? There is no evidence that this is the accurate fact, and there is every evidence that a verdict attained in this way would be rejected. It would cut down the pay that the favored workers have been getting, not to mention denying them the increase they are striking for. On the other hand, the lowest rates prevail where no permanent organizations exist; and if a strike should arise here, should the tribunal take an average rate of pay as its standard? That would greatly increase the rate that prevails in the region where it is acting, and would give the men more than most of their employers could afford. It would discard the necessary rule of keeping within the limit of what an industry can pay without seeing many of its shops and mills closed. Yet a court which refused to raise the pay of the lowest cla.s.s at all would seem to accept the bad results of monopoly; for it would ratify the hard arrangements which workers who are excluded from the better fields are forced to accept.
_A Court of Arbitration not the Agency for Rectifying General Evils due to Monopoly._--It will be seen that the difficulty we discover in the way of a wholly satisfactory action by the court is caused by a tacit demand that it shall undo the results of monopoly itself. We instinctively say to ourselves that the court must insist on doing ultimate justice, and that all rates perverted by monopoly are unjust.
The arbitrators should pull down the high rates, raise the low ones, and create such an approach to uniformity as would be realized if labor were as perfectly mobile as a static a.s.sumption requires. To do this would give some laborers much less than their employers can afford to pay and less than they often do pay; while it would be giving to others more than their employers can pay without bankrupting themselves. If such levelling is to be done, it must be done by some other agency than a board of arbitration.
_The Att.i.tude of the Public toward a Strike by Employees of a Monopoly._--If we turn from a formal tribunal to the court of public opinion, we find a like state of affairs. There is no danger whatever that the public will justify cutting down the wages now received by men in the employment of a monopoly to a much lower level. That in itself would not right the wrongs of the poorly paid workers or those of the public itself. The employer would go on getting high prices for his products and would pocket the new gain which the reduction of wages gave him. If a great corporation is now taxing the public, even those who suffer would rather see the proceeds of the grab shared with the men than see it all held by the employing corporation. It is, indeed, true that if a tribunal were to give the men an _increased_ share of what the monopoly is getting, the employing company would try to recoup itself from the public by raising prices still higher; and, if it were to give a reduced share, the company might enlarge its business and make its prices a shade lower. Giving to the men a share of the grab made by their employer does indirectly cause a certain increase of the injury done to others, and withdrawing a share might slightly lessen the injury. The public would rather see the higher wages paid, and take some chance of this minor and indirect injury, than see the employing company pocket all that it exacts from the public.
_Monopoly Prices as affected by an Increase of Wages._--Arbitration often authorizes a rate of pay based on the profits of an employers"
monopoly; and yet a tribunal of this kind must not, and will not, make itself the accomplice of any monopoly by making its position more secure. The policy of every public inst.i.tution must, and will, be designed to help make an end of every such outlaw that now has a foothold in the field of business. Yet any plan which would force a monopolistic employer to give to his men an increased share of the "grab" which he makes from the pockets of consumers tends to increase the amount of the grab if the employer is entirely secure in his position. A monopoly that is thus safe from interference tries to put the price of each of its products at the point where the largest net revenue is afforded. If distance along the line _AG_ measures the supply of a commodity and vertical distance from it measures price, _DF_ will be the price curve of a commodity, as it is offered in increasing amounts. _AD_ will be the price when one unit is offered, and _GF_ will be the price when the full amount represented by the line _AG_ is produced. The price will then stand at the cost of producing the article. When a monopoly is firmly established, it will seek to get the largest net profit that can be had, and a consistent execution of the plan would reduce the output from the amount measured by _AG_ to that measured by _AH_. The price would then become _HE_ and the net profit the amount of the area _EB_. If wages are so raised that the cost becomes _G"F"_, the net profit becomes _EB"_. This profit can be increased by further reducing the product to the amount _AH"_, putting the price at _H"E"_, and the net profit _E"B"_, which is larger than _EB"_. If an independent producer can employ non-union labor and create the goods at the cost _GF_, and market them without reducing the price much below the level indicated by _H"E"_, he can make on each unit of product a profit nearly equal to _I"E"_. This fact makes the monopoly cautious about raising its price to the level _H"E"_. A tribunal of arbitration may somewhat raise wages without fearing such an increase of prices. By a crude and instinctive judgment the court will hit upon some level of wages which falls well within the limit of what the monopoly can pay and is above the amount which marginal social labor gets.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
_The Probable Result of a Strike as a Standard for an Award._--Let us see what would happen if a board of arbitration should abandon all effort to level out the general inequalities in wages, and try chiefly to end quarrels and avert long-continued strikes. With this in view it might aim to give the men whatever they would be likely to gain by means of the strike. In a true sense this mode of procedure is more nearly scientific than either of the others. Any tribunal of voluntary arbitration will aim to content both parties sufficiently to prevent an interruption of business. The men may consent to take somewhat less than they hope to get by a successful strike; and the employers may be willing to pay somewhat more than they would at the end of a successful lockout. The probable outcome of the struggle may be differently estimated by the contending parties, and if so, an actual struggle will end by making employers pay more and the workmen take less than they had severally expected to do. If this amount can be awarded at the outset and the struggle precluded, all parties will be gainers by the continuance of business, unless the employers desire a strike for the sake of making their products scarce and dear.
_When the Probable Results of a Strike afford an Unfair Standard of Wages._--Where monopolies exist and trade unions rely on violence in carrying their point, it would not be fair to establish a permanent rule of wages based on the amounts that strikes so conducted secure.
Such strikes depend for success on the violent exclusion of non-union men; and actually to give permanence to rates so gained would be to fasten on the majority of workers the disabilities under which they now labor, and to perpetuate the gains of a twofold monopoly. On the other hand, if the court should make its award conform to the probable result of a strike which should be general in the trade, but should not resort to any violence, the procedure would be natural and would base itself, in an unconscious way, on the true standard of wages.
Such a general strike, by its mere magnitude, would preclude the possibility of any immediate filling of the vacated places by men at the time out of employment; and yet the fact that non-union men were not forcibly kept out of the trade would be an all-important feature of the situation. If, when no strikes were pending, men could gain admission to this field, there would be no true monopoly on the men"s side. The rule of giving, by arbitration, what a strike would secure would remove the chance of cutting down the rate to that which prevails in the more ill-paid employments, and would insure to the men the rate that marginal workers in actual employment get plus the two additional amounts spoken of at the beginning of the preceding chapter. The marginal product of labor plus an amount for personal superiority plus an amount for good organization would be the standard to which wages in favored employments would conform; and it is as nearly normal as any practicable standard would be. A free application of it would reduce the wages of unions that thrive by the use of force and would be opposed by such unions. If it were adopted, there is a prospect that the awards would be rejected by the men until hard experience should teach them to relinquish gains secured by violence.
Yet a tribunal that should adopt this standard would allow workmen to retain every advantage that organization can afford without a violation of the criminal law. Its guide in making awards would be the pay which the best unions lawfully get in trades akin to the one in whose case they were acting.
In dealing with a union which is not a true monopoly and does not depend on force, arbitrators may safely award what an actual strike would probably secure, and the simple plan of compromising gives an approximation to this amount. What the men will accept and the employers will give is about what a strike would extort. Where a monopoly of the field of labor exists and force is used to protect it, a compromise which antic.i.p.ates the probable result of a strike concedes what could not otherwise be lawfully secured, and we have to see whether this is a plan that a board of arbitration can properly adopt.
_Arbitration as affected by Employers" Monopolies._--We confine our attention, for the present, to arbitration that has no power of coercion behind it. A board may be formed which is compelled by statute to investigate quarrels and announce fair terms of settlement, but the contending parties may be allowed to do as they please about accepting the awards. The most difficult case with which such a tribunal would have to deal is that in which the employer has a monopoly of a department of production, and a trade union has an exclusive possession of its field of labor. The mere removal of the employer"s monopoly would so greatly simplify the situation as to leave no ground for serious difficulty. With that out of the way,--with potential compet.i.tion doing the perfect work that under good laws and good policing it ought to do,--the pay of laborers in other employments would be somewhat higher, and extortionate profits would be altogether absent. Profits based on special economy would exist, as they should, but those which are filched unjustly from any one"s pocket would not exist. There would be likely to be, in most of the subgroups, independent employers efficient enough to hold their positions, but without any means of getting abnormal gains. These would be marginal employers in their several subgroups, and their returns would range about that static level at which the wages of labor and the interest on capital would absorb them all. An award based on what such employers could pay would express what other employers would naturally pay, and it would be all that the subgroup as a whole could concede without ruining some of its members, but it would allow others to make something by special economies in production. Productivity profits they would get and no others, and these it is in every way expedient that they should be allowed to enjoy. Suppressing employers" monopolies would remove much of the difficulty connected with arbitration, and putting an end to violence on the men"s part would remove almost all the remainder.
With monopolies in the field it is quite otherwise. Their gains are not of the kind that it is for the interest of the public to let them keep. The public claims these sums on grounds of equity and expediency. It is a perverted distribution that gives them to their present recipients; and this fact threatens to involve more and more the processes of production themselves. Centralization, without monopoly, increases the product of industry; but the monopolistic feature that often attends it partially paralyzes the producing forces, and must be gotten rid of before there can be a normal income to divide and a normal way of dividing it. _The court of arbitration itself cannot get rid of it_, and it would do harm if it should try to do so. Drastically to cut down wages that have been raised by the power of monopoly would injure some workmen without materially helping others, and it would benefit chiefly the monopolistic employers. Such a policy would bring the entire system of arbitration to an end; for it is partly a fear that arbitration would not leave to favorably situated unions as much as they can now get by strikes and boycotts that prevents the system from coming into vogue. The state can end the monopoly, but it must do it by other measures than installing courts of arbitration. In the interim--long or short, as the case may be--before these measures will have their effect, it is necessary to proceed on a plan of securing by awards something like what would result from actual trials of strength. The effects of adjudication will not, in this interim, be ideal, but it is necessary to accept this fact and struggle the harder to obtain conditions that will improve them.
_Abnormal Conditions which Arbitrators must Accept._--Crude force of one sort or another would sometimes give to organized labor twice or thrice as much as free labor can earn at the social margin of production, and the public approaches the problem of adjustment while this condition exists. It may be that a trust has crushed compet.i.tion, made large gains for itself, and made it possible to pay employees at a high rate; while, on the other hand, a trade union has made itself strong, put pressure on the employers, excluded free laborers, and secured a share of the monopolistic spoils. Arbitrators, then, whenever a strike is pending, may divide the spoils as a strike would do, between masters and men. This will leave a few workers in possession of a rich field and many hungry ones outside of it; and we have a.s.serted that the board should confirm the workmen"s tenure of place on the sole condition that they accept a rate of pay which it shall authorize. In this case the arbitrators authorize a high rate, while needy men stand ready to take a lower one. They confirm wages based on the profits of monopoly, but look to the state as the power which will get them out of their anomalous position, by making an end of monopoly.
_Why Sharing a "Grab" already made is not an Aggravation of the Evil._--While plunder is to be had, it is at least by one point fairer that workers should have a share of it than that employers should have it all. We have said that the court of arbitration finds two issues needing settlement, namely, the relation of employers and employed within the business, and that of laborers outside of this department of industry to those within it. Only one of these issues is it capable of settling, and it is by a true instinct and not merely from expediency that arbitrators permit workmen to share in some degree the gains of the monopoly that employs them. This is legitimate, however, only on the condition that, by further measures, the gains of monopoly be reduced.
_How Arbitration will be facilitated by the Suppression of Monopolies._--In studying monopolies we discovered that the prices of their goods do not entirely part company with their natural standards, even when governments do not at all interfere with them. Potential compet.i.tion keeps these prices from rising above the standard of cost by more than a certain margin. We shall see that if governments do nothing in the way of controlling the contests over wages, the rates that these yield will not be wholly unnatural. They will be held within a certain distance from the standards. If too high wages are exacted, the barriers will be broken down and competing laborers will come into the favored fields. The potential compet.i.tion of idle men hangs as a menace over the heads of the too exacting trade unionists, and enforces a measure of prudence in the wages demanded. If the unions ask too much and strike in order to get it, the compet.i.tion which is now latent will become active, other men will take the vacated places, and the struggle of force will begin. Slugging may ensue and may go to the limit of a weak government"s toleration. The more complete is the exclusion of free labor, the higher is the rate which organized labor secures; but this rate always falls within a certain distance of the normal one, as that is fixed by the final productivity of social labor. Even the pay secured by violent strikes is, as we have already shown, _governed by_ the law of final productivity, though it does not _coincide with_ that rate. Actual pay and standard pay are like a vessel and a tug attached to each other by a hawser, which allows one to drift far from the other but does not let them part company. In the long run the tug takes the tow with it.
Even the wages which a trust gives to a fighting union--wages paid by a monopoly to a monopoly--are governed by the law of final productivity, since there is a limit on what the trust can extort from the public, and there is a limit on what the union can extort from the trust. Potential compet.i.tion, by limiting both the producing corporation and the trade union, vindicates the natural law of wages, though its results are made inexact by monopoly.
_How Potential Compet.i.tion affects Organized Labor._--We have seen that potential compet.i.tion keeps within limits the prices of goods made by trusts. If they become too high, new mills are built. In a like way potential compet.i.tion puts a check on the wages a strong union can secure; for if these are too far above the level of non-union men"s pay, such men will find their way into the business.
Open shops will be established, either by the present employers or by new ones. There will be much to be gained by an independent shop manned by non-union labor, and the danger of this makes a trade union more conservative than it would otherwise be. The chief potentiality in the case is that of the new and independent shop, and if the way is open for this to appear, the range of difference between the pay of favored laborers and that of others is greatly reduced. The trade union may be able to carry its point and keep free labor from its field, so long as it has only its own employers to deal with; but if new employers will appear whenever there is an inducement to do so, the case is quite otherwise. The new mills make the greater gains if they are manned by non-union men.
With the field open for all producers, the danger of free shops with free men will impend always over the union that demands too much for its members. This is now true even where consolidated companies exist, and it would be doubly true if there were no such companies. The rivalries which would then appear would keep wages, as well as prices, near to their natural standards.
In the absence of monopolies on the part of employers, and of "slugging" on the part of workmen, arbitrators may accept as standards what the actual dealings of employers and employed yield. In most cases they will ratify no wrong by doing so. The court may act as it now does and announce a rate based on a mere compromise or on the probable result of a strike. If the men accept the award, let them keep their places; but if not, let the positions be open to whoever will take them, and let the state repress every form of violence that would interfere with their doing so. The sentiment of even a local community will sustain such a maintenance of order.
_The Case of Trades not affected by the Potential Compet.i.tion of Non-union Men with New Employers._--Building trades are peculiarly situated in that their products have to be made in the locality where they will stay, and no compet.i.tion from labor living at a distance is to be feared. If the local unions can protect their field by force, they can establish a high rate of pay, even though the employers have no unions. Arbitration that merely gives what a strike will yield will here deviate greatly from the natural standard of wages.
Labor in mining is somewhat similarly situated, and so is labor in transportation. In these, and in some other fields, new men do not weaken the position of strikers unless they are brought to the places where the strikers have been working; and that exposes them to a.s.sault. It is in the making of portable goods for a general market that the new and independent shop manned by non-union laborers is an important factor.
It is easy to answer the question whether, in such fields, the board of arbitration should confirm the workmen"s tenure of place while his pay is sustained by force. All slugging is inherently criminal and should be always and everywhere repressed. In the cases that we first examined, a safe course would be to hold it in repression, announce a rate of pay based on what a strike would then yield, and trust to other measures for destroying monopoly on the capitalist"s side. The chief danger of violence begins when the men reject the award and others take their places, and at this point the fact of arbitration will make the duty of the state easier though hardly clearer.
The case of such trades as building and mining differs from the others only in the fact that there is not present the check that is elsewhere afforded by the danger of new mills, and the pay secured by crude force is high. To announce a rate based on the result of a strike, _if slugging is to be permitted during the strike_, is to accept, for the moment, what violence will secure; and nothing will remove this feature of the adjudication but a manful a.s.sertion of sovereignty by the state and a complete ending of the tolerance now accorded to anarchy. By no means, however, does this deprive union men of the advantage that organization gives them. They may be secured in the possession of every advantage which collective bargaining, without violence, can secure. Great numbers enlisted in a union will give to it a prospect of success in enforcing any reasonable demand. Voluntary arbitration, that aims to preclude a strike, will have to respect this fact of organization and give the men about what a legitimate strike would yield. As a rule, this will result in compromises of opposing claims, and if violence is not in sight as a resource, the compromises will fall near to the natural standard of wages.
_Why Conciliation is preferred to Arbitration._--Both among organized laborers and corporate employers there is a dread of state action for the positive adjustment of wages. There is a preference for conciliation over any kind of arbitration, and there is a preference for voluntary arbitration over that which has any trace of authority behind it. For tribunals which have full coercive power, most employers and strongly organized laborers have an insurmountable repugnance. If such tribunals were introduced, it would be against their strongest opposition, which is saying that a measure designed to secure industrial peace would have to be put into operation while the parties directly interested in it opposed it with might and main.
The reasons for this att.i.tude are not difficult to discover.
Conciliation aims solely to secure internal peace in a department of industry. To avert strikes or reduce their duration is all that it can do and all that the parties directly interested wish to have it do.
From the point of view of employers and employed in a highly profitable industry, the averting of strikes is enough to aim at, and even the public sometimes accepts this easy-going view and thinks that everything desirable is gained merely by averting strife or ending it when it occurs. Uninterrupted production--the saving of the great wastes that strikes entail--does, indeed, promote the public welfare.
When conciliation does this, it indirectly does something for the public. The essential thing about conciliation, then, is that it does not consciously try to do anything but to make the two parties in the dispute over wages contented enough to go on producing. A board which aims only to do this is careful not to introduce any one who represents an outside interest. The procedure must be kept "within the family." As is often said, "those who understand the business" must settle disputes within it. What is really desired is that only those who are _interested in_ the business should have anything to say about it, and there is a dread of giving representation, either to the general public or to independent labor. Moreover, when the defects of conciliation are spoken of, what is mentioned is the uncertainty as to its working, the probability that in many cases it will not bring the disputants to an agreement and cause production to go on. There is no dread of the rates of pay that it yields. There is practically no dread on any one"s part of what happens when employers and employed are contented because they jointly thrive at the expense of the public. Rather than have production stopped, the public is often willing to let a dispute be settled on almost any terms, though the result may be to let some men thrive at the expense of consumers and of other laborers. There is a monopolistic grab the sharing of which makes both parties better off than are men of their cla.s.s elsewhere.
Singular as it may seem, even this att.i.tude of the public is justifiable. It is entirely right not only to welcome conciliation where it can be made to work, but to try it as often as possible before resorting to arbitration.
_Rates resulting from Conciliation not Unlike those resulting from Strikes._--The results of collective bargaining, with conciliation in cases of dispute, come within a certain distance of those which would be gained by a perfectly natural adjustment of wages. All that we have said about the relation of wages adjusted by strikes to their natural standards applies here; potential compet.i.tion generally keeps the actual rate within a certain distance of the natural one, though a monopoly may make the distance unduly great. If potential compet.i.tion works feebly on the employers" side,--if independent producers are slow to appear even when the price of a product is very high,--there is a large profit in the industry for some one; and if potential compet.i.tion works feebly on the side of labor,--if workmen can safely strike with little fear that independent laborers will dare to take their places,--the men can secure a fair-sized share of this profit.
A strong trade union working for a strong monopoly gets wages that exceed the standard rate by the largest obtainable margin; and yet, as we have said, even this excess has limits, and adjusting disputes by conciliation does not alter those limits. The rates agreed upon are still governed by the standard rate to the same extent as under the regime of strikes. The strike and the lockout become potential, but they impend as possibilities and do their work. The board of conciliation knows that they will occur unless their probable results are antic.i.p.ated and forestalled by the decision. The board cannot do otherwise, therefore, than to restrict the actual strikes. Wages then become the natural rate with a plus mark, and may be said to be adjusted in a way that at the bottom is natural, though it works under vitiating influences.
_Why Voluntary Arbitration does more than Conciliation._--Voluntary arbitration is an advance over mere conciliation in point of effectiveness. It departs somewhat from the plan of confining the action to the family, since it introduces some other parties as arbitrators and thus invites some recognition of outside interests.
Nevertheless its actual working involves little change in principle, and its results do not greatly vary from those attained by conciliation. When we speak of arbitration as voluntary, what we usually mean is that acceptance of the award is in no way enforced.
Either party may accept it or refuse it, but it may be that both parties acting together cannot prevent the investigation; and the economic law of wages acts best when this is the case. How such voluntary arbitration is provided for,--whether it is established by free contract between employers and employed, or by statute,--is not in this connection of importance. The one thing that is important is that no compulsion is applied to either party to force him to accept the award.
_A Moral Compulsion due to Voluntary Arbitration._--A certain moral force is, indeed, necessarily behind the award of such a tribunal. It informs the public what fair-minded men regard as a reasonable adjustment of the dispute, and forces any one who refuses to accept such a decision to go on record as claiming more than is presumably just. This tends to alienate public sympathy, and to forfeit the aid which sympathy insures. Moreover, where voluntary arbitration is established by a contract between parties,--where, for example, masters and men agree that during a term of years disputes that cannot otherwise be settled shall be referred to a tribunal const.i.tuted in some prescribed way,--the decision of the tribunal is made by the contract to be especially binding.
_Why Mere Compromises lead to Fair Results._--A merely compromising policy, such as the one which has often been sharply criticised, involves an approximation to what strikes would yield; and this, as we have seen, gives results which, in a rude way, are controlled by economic law. A fact of the greatest importance is that the awards made by boards of arbitration with merely voluntary power are not compromises between mere demands of the two parties; they are between _genuine ultimata_. When the court is called in, the employer has offered a rate of pay and stands ready to close his mill if it is not accepted; and the men have offered to take a certain rate and are ready to strike if the rate is not given. The essential fact in the case is that neither of these rates usually varies by more than a certain amount from the natural level of wages. There is every difference between a demand put forward for strategic purposes and a real ultimatum. If workmen knew that a court would simply make an even division between their own demand and their employer"s offer, then men who were getting two dollars a day might ask for four in the hope that the arbitrators might give them three. Even if no such expectations were entertained, it is certain that both parties would exaggerate their claims; workers would demand more and employers offer less than they expected in the end to agree upon. When, however, the demands are not made in this way for the sake of impressing the tribunal, but are known to be genuine ultimata, the case is quite different. The workers will actually go on a strike if their demands are not conceded, and they will certainly have to do this if they make their figures extravagant. The employer will close his mill if his offer is not accepted, and he will have to do it if his offer is absurdly low. Very much is involved in the fact that an actual severing of the relation between employers and employed impends over them as a possibility.
_The Chief Advantage of Arbitration over Conciliation._--We are now in a position to measure the real difference between conciliation and voluntary arbitration. If a strike comes after nothing has been tried except conciliation, there is often nothing to prevent the strikers from resorting to all the devices which are available for guarding their tenure of place--in other words, for keeping "scabs" out of the field. The local community is in its usual position of uncertainty as to the equities of the case, and is likely to show its usual hesitancy in giving to the new laborers the complete protection which the laws enjoin. There is the customary dread of the effect of letting a strike-breaking force have full sway and the opportunity for disciplining the former workmen into submission. The chance that the resulting rate of pay may be too low to do justice to the laborers remains before the eyes of the local community, and has the effect to which we have earlier called attention--that of taking much of the vigor out of the official arm when violence occurs.
How is it when a tribunal of arbitration has studied the case and announced a decision? Though the workmen may be as free to strike as ever, such an action would put them at a fatal disadvantage. The arbitration has given to the public a basis for a judgment as to the equities of the dispute. If the tribunal is one which commands respect, a refusal to abide by its decision puts the men _prima facie_ in the wrong. If they strike now, they reject a rate which is authoritatively p.r.o.nounced just. Even this they have the privilege of doing if they so desire; but if they go farther and forcibly prevent other men from accepting the equitable rate and doing the work, they forfeit their right of tenure; and it would be a strangely const.i.tuted public which, under such circ.u.mstances, would let them use fists, missiles, or clubs in defending it.
There may be an agreement between employers and employed to submit to impartial arbitration such disputes as are not otherwise settled; and when this has been actually done and a decision has been reached, it is made by the contract to be too binding to be lightly disregarded.
If it is still disregarded and if violence is resorted to, the forfeiture of public sympathy is so complete that there is little danger that violence will be winked at. The action of such a tribunal may be nearly as effective as that of one which has full coercive power.
_Why Compulsory Arbitration is less Certain to give a Just Award._--Arbitration by a court that has full compulsion behind it does not theoretically need to satisfy the contending parties. If it can fine or otherwise coerce the party that refuses to accept its mandate, and thus insure a forced compliance with its orders, it is conceivable that it might announce rates of pay entirely at variance with prevailing ones. It might announce arbitrary rates or make a bold effort to discover and introduce those which should coincide with the ultimate natural standards--which would mean a relentless reducing of some rates and a raising of others. In a democratic country, however, such a court would have to satisfy the contestants and the public or forfeit its existence, and the only mode of insuring its continuance would be a more conservative policy and a respecting of the _status quo_. It might appeal to the probable result of violent contests somewhat less than a purely voluntary tribunal might do, since it might venture to give offense to employers or to workmen, and trust to the support of the general public; but in the main it would have to let the existing rates of wages continue with no radical change. Even though it were able by some statistical test to discover the natural rates of wages, it could not be bold enough rigorously to apply them without forfeiting its existence. Under any system, then, whether it be crude contention, conciliation, voluntary arbitration, or compulsory arbitration, the rates fixed by the present half-savage process would be allowed to rule till the process itself should be freed from the perversion that monopoly causes. Inequalities of pay would be tempered in different degrees by the various tribunals, but the existing rates in each employment would continue to furnish a basis of adjustment.
_The Most Available Plan of Arbitration._--Since there is little prospect that compulsory arbitration will give rates of wages which will differ materially from those secured by arbitration of the voluntary sort, the latter kind has the preference, so long as it is able actually to prevent the strikes and lockouts which, at present, are so wasteful and disorganizing. To accomplish this, there is available a kind of arbitration which is voluntary, but has behind it enough authority to make actual strikes very rare. By this plan the state recognizes for an interim the laborers" tenure of place, on condition that they continue working during the time occupied by the adjustment. If they stop working before a decision is announced, they forfeit their tenure of positions. When the tribunal announces a decision as to the terms on which labor shall go on, the force already working has the option of retaining the positions or abandoning them; but if they elect to leave them, it must be with the understanding that their departure is definitive and their right to tenure surrendered. The state then uses its utmost power in protecting men who may occupy the vacated places. The mere prospect of this outcome will be enough, and the shifting of the force will not have actually to be made, since the right of tenure is too valuable to be forfeited.