en 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 Competition 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 competition 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
assault. 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 t