s
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 class 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 assumption 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 Attitude of the Public toward a Strike by Employees of a
Monopoly._--If we turn from a formal tribunal to the court of public
opi