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 anticipates 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 competition 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 a