quently occur, and in which there is the greatest difficulty in harmonizing conflicting interests and assimilating hostile views. What is "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" is a most difficult and complex problem, and yet it is constantly recurring with ever-increasing frequency. Concerning its solution there are honest differences of opinion, not only in individual cases, but as to the basis, the principle upon which it shall be decided. Even when a decision has been reached it is not final and permanent, for the conditions existing when it was framed are not themselves permanent. What may be fair and equitable to-day may be unfair and unjust to-morrow, when the conditions differ from those of to-day. So, with the ebb and flow of the tides of business, of prices. and demand, so frequent in these days of the increased effectiveness of labor and rapid transportation; with the changes in methods of production or conditions of work, and the introduction of methods entirely new, so common in this age of invention, comes an ever-recurring necessity for a revision of the contracts or agreements governing the relation of employer and employed, and with it the possibility of differences as to what changes the differing conditions demand.

Disagreements of the second class relate to what is or has been, not to what shall be, and grow out of differences as to what really is the agreement or contract, or what is the custom of the trade—that is, as to matters of fact or of construction. The parties to a contract, if it is a verbal one, may honestly differ as to its terms; or as to its construction, if it is a written one. It may be ambiguous or doubtful; craft or cupidity may have violated it in spirit or letter or both, or it may be transgressed inadvertently. Labor may be performed under some conditions more onerous or more beneficial to one party or the

other than those the contract calls for, or under conditions not at all contemplated when the contract was made. There may be a doubt, honest or otherwise, as to just what the custom is under given conditions, but whatever form the question takes, it always refers to work performed or contracts that exist, though the decision may govern work to be done, possibly may re-frame the agreement.

Quarrels growing out of what I have termed "matters of sentiment" are happily less frequent than formerly. They may precipitate strikes, but labor contests now rarely result from these quarrels alone.

Their chief cause is to be found in a failure to recognize fully that the relation of employer and employed is no longer that of master and servant. The employer curtly refuses to submit to what he terms interference or dictation, and the employé hotly and indignantly declines to recognize any assumption of authority on the part of the employer, or to entertain an idea of inferiority on his own. The interference or dictation may be only a plain, honest assertion by the employé of his own rights; the act regarded as an assumption of authority an inadvertent one; but with this old idea of the dominant and servient relation lingering, often unconsciously, in the minds and prejudices of both classes, and with a mutual distrust and suspicion, the inheritance of centuries of conflict still remaining, individuals, and more especially masses, are extremely sensitive to any act or word that in appearance even seems to recognize the existence of the old relations.

It will also be found that these "matters of sentiment," this offended self-respect of the parties to these differences, often defer their settlement, and prolong contests when they arise. The question at issue, which at first may be a simple one, unless some mode of settlement be

quickly discovered, becomes a complicated one.

Ideas

of fairness, generosity, justice, good faith, become involved, and the question assumes new phases, and presents questions that are most difficult of solution.

CHAPTER II.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS PRELIMINARY

ΤΟ THE INVESTI

GATION OF METHODS FOR SETTLING LABOR

DIFFERENCES.

IN seeking methods for the prevention or adjustment of labor differences, the results reached are often worthless or of little value, because the search has proceeded upon assumptions that are erroneous, or that are based upon conditions that do not exist. There is also, on the other hand, a failure or refusal to recognize conditions that undoubtedly prevail, and causes which experience proves are potent within the field of industry. No method for harmonizing labor differences that ignores obvious facts, or that refuses to recognize forces which play an important part in determining and adjusting the relations of employer and employed, can be of any practical value. Such methods, when tried, will either break down from lack of adaptability or from inherent incapacity, or if they act for a time, will fail when the strain for which they were not calculated is exerted.

That notable changes have taken place, especially within the last twenty-five years, in the theories, the conditions, and the relations involved in discussions of labor differences and their settlement, cannot be questioned. The theory of the relation of employer and employed has been recast, and their attitude to each other, and of both to the state and to society, greatly altered. Even the individuals of the class maintain quite different relations to each

other, and to the industry as a whole in which they are engaged. Legislative restriction of labor has been abandoned entirely or greatly modified, the laws of conspiracy altered, trades-unions legalized, and the body of labor legislation, beginning with the Statute of Laborers, and covering a period of 650 years, which has been "the effort of a dominant body to keep down a lower class which had begun to show inconvenient aspirations," practically removed from the statute-book. The common-law doctrine of non-restraint of trade and the theory of non-interference with the liberty of the subject have been greatly qualified by legislative enactments, such as the factory, truck, and employers'-liability acts; laissez faire has been degraded from an eternal and inflexible law to a simple rule of conduct that may change with circumstances; competition has been acknowledged to be imperfect; combinations are multiplying; the wage-fund theory has been exploded; and the economic man discharged from his onerous duties, and one with “sympathies, apathies, and antipathies " employed in his stead. In the face of all these changes it needs no argument to show that the methods of thought and action that prevailed, and assumptions based on the conditions of years ago, are of little value now. He will most assuredly lose his way who attempts to direct his search for methods of adjusting labor disputes by the political economy prevalent a generation since.

On the other hand, he will commit as grievous an error who fails to recognize the new conditions and to frankly accept the limitations and methods which they impose. As a result in part of these changes, as well as of the quicker and broader grasp of the age, the sources of discontent and the causes of difference have greatly multiplied. The problem is assuming greater complexity