involves the admission of an
outsider as a judge of their business methods. The employes object because
they fear the sympathy of arbitrators with the superior intelligence,
wealth and power of employers. Yet there seems no good reason why a
representative body of men, chosen for character and ability, should not
be appealed to by both parties in a contest which has already broken up
the natural relations of business. As has been shown, the whole community
suffers in every interruption of production and trade, and so far the
community has the right, and should have the legal privilege, of insisting
upon the fairest and quickest means of settling the controversy. In far
less important difficulties between individuals, society insists that
either individual shall have the right to bring the other into court.

Society is waiting only to settle the best form of a court of arbitration
for labor difficulties. The trend of popular judgment is in favor of a
well-organized commission, having the dignity if not the authority of a
supreme court. That such commissions have not generally come up to the
ideal is due largely to political influence among leaders of
organizations, so that the commissioners become the choice of a faction
rather than of the people. It is conceivable that the functions of judges
in a series of state courts may be so enlarged under carefully framed laws
as to include the duty of arbitration in labor contests.

If the people are not yet ready for compulsory settlement of such
questions, the time is surely coming, under the enormous aggregation of
industries and the immense combination of employes, when the judgment of
the people expressed in due form of law will control both employer and
employe. The whole world is recognizing methods of arbitration as better
than warfare. It will soon insist that these minor wars within the
commonwealth shall cease.

_Profit-sharing._--Some general system of preventing antipathy between
profit-makers and wage-earners seems desirable. Certain interests are
known to be mutual, and both employers and employed welcome any system by
which those mutual interests can further the success of the business.
Among the methods proposed, and sometimes successfully employed, the most
prominent is profit-sharing. This implies on the part of employers after
payment of current wages a distribution, at stated times, far enough apart
to secure a fair average in the profit and loss account, o