58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nesses. An Ohio judge in dissolving a combination of ice dealers 

 ordered the reestablishment of the price charged during the preceding 

 year. 



The decision of this judge bears a close resemblance to the action 

 of the English government as to wages immediately after the black 

 death. The present movement toward the regulation of prices, rates 

 and wages is distinctly a reversion to conditions preceding the nine- 

 teenth century; and the importance and extent of the movement will 

 necessitate a thorough search for a reliable and scientific standard for 

 the determination of fair wages and fair prices. The medievalists 

 had a very definite conception of fair price; men of to-day are not so 

 favored. During the middle ages these problems were solved by means 

 of the inelastic measuring rod of status, or of class demarkation. Each 

 class in the community had its own rather definite and customary 

 standard of living; and the summit of personal ambition was success 

 within a limited social and economic sphere rather than that of progress 

 from one class to the next higher. Ambition was curbed and chastened 

 by the great fact of birth within a given social compartment. The 

 attempt was made so to regulate prices as to maintain class immobility. 

 "With the advent of the era of competition the rigidity of class demarka- 

 tion was destroyed; and a democratic form of government resting on 

 broad suffrage requirements makes a return improbable. The modern 

 student or statesman instead of resting his theory of fair price upon a 

 basis of special privilege, must place it upon the firm foundation of 

 equality of privileges, upon the abolition of artificial and inherited 

 inequalities. This return to medievalism does not mean a return to 

 artificial and unyielding class demarkations. Society is moving toward 

 a point farther up on the spiral of history. The return to medievalism 

 does mean the elimination of forced and monopoly gains; and is a 

 natural and inevitable product of the progress toward democracy. 



If the cornerstone upon which medieval writers based their doc- 

 trines regarding fair price has been removed by the increasing power 

 of the non-privileged class ; what is left upon which to build a new and 

 democratic doctrine of fair price ? In the modern formulation of the 

 doctrine, a fair price for an article or a service is one which will give 

 to the workers who have any useful part in getting the article into the 

 hands of the final consumer, whether that part be in obtaining the raw 

 material, transforming or exchanging these materials, a " fair wage." 

 A fair price will also give to capital a " reasonable rate " of interest, 

 and to the entrepreneur or manager — the man whose genius guides and 

 directs the business — such a return as will keep him in the business and 

 will call forth his best efforts. A fair price does not contain elements 

 which go to make up monopoly profits, or to reward the efforts of 

 unnecessary workers in the complex system of modern industry. This 

 is the basic principle upon which the new economic edifice must be 

 anchored. Competition has led to combination, and combination to 



