ion's share has been awarded to the
lion. Decisions proposing another settlement were speedily forgotten
because not enforced. Those submitting to arbitration frequently did so
with the mental reservation that the decision to be acceptable must at
least approximate the conditions they felt they would be able to
establish by a show of strength. From this position to one of complacent
acceptance of arbitrary decisions, applied not to an isolated group but
seeking to comprehend all labor or a given class, is a long step for
both employers and employees." And again: "In arbitrary wage
adjustments the absence of well defined and acceptable standards to be
used in wage determination as well as the difficulty in enforcing awards
that did not conform closely to the law of supply and demand has forced
arbitration to resort to the expediency of splitting the difference.
Cost of living, proportionate expense of labor, and net profits, when
taken into account have been more often evoked in defense of claims made
than as a means of determining what claims were just under the
circumstances."[1]

So, also, with any attempt to devise principles which might serve as the
basis of a policy of wage settlement in the United States. They would
represent the effort to develop standards by which conflicting claims
could be resolved. It is not desired to signify agreement by this
admission with those who believe that all principles of wage settlement
must be purely passive, with those who argue that wage settlement must
perforce be nothing more than a recurrent use of expedients produced on
the spur of the occasion out of the magical hat of the arbitrator. All
that is meant is that no policy of wage settlement will succeed if its
results diverge too greatly from the interests which it, in turn, would
guide and restrain. Any policy of wage settlement must take into
consideration the moral and social circumstances pertinent to the
dispute as well as the economic. It must express active social and
ethical claims as well as recognize economic facts. It must be supported
by the sense that it is at least moderately just.

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