e to throw into clear light
the forces and relationships which determine wages at the present time.
The way has thus been prepared for an attempt to work out principles for
use in the settlement of industrial disputes. Past experience in
industrial arbitration or adjudication is a fertile source of
suggestion in this endeavor; although much of it has been rather like a
search in the dark for objects not too well described beforehand. The
definition of aims was an attempt to find out the objects of our search.
The analysis of the present economic situation and of wage principles
was an attempt to get acquainted with the area in which the search must
go on.

The remainder of this book will consist of an attempt to work out
principles of wage settlement which could be applied in wage disputes
with relative peace and satisfaction. If adopted, they would serve as a
substitute for a resort to open force in such disputes. Their acceptance
would mean that when ordinary collective bargaining fails as a means of
settling wages, the dispute would be referred to some constituted
authority, who would use these principles to reach a decision.

2.--The plan pursued in the subsequent exposition requires a few brief
preliminary notes.

First, in regard to the order of exposition. What follows is simply the
direct statement of a series of principles (embodied in measures, as all
principles must be). These principles, separately taken, cover most of
the problems presented by wage disputes. Taken together they might be
composed into a policy of wage settlement. Indeed, at the end of the
book, an attempt is made to combine them into such a policy. Not that it
is believed that any policy of wage settlement can really be wrought in
a piece this way. But because it is believed that ultimately it will be
recognized that wage disputes cannot be settled as isolated events.
There will have to be recourse to thought out principles, systematically
applied. It will be found that no single principle will suffice; that
many principles will have to be combined and used with reference to each
other. There will be, in short, a call for a unified policy of wage
settlement.

Secondly, in regard to the range of the exposition. The question of the
political machinery that would have to be created in order to administer
the proposed principles is on the whole avoided. To have attempted to
discuss that question systematically would have greatly complicate