58 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 471. 



zations which ohstinately adhere to vicious 

 principles and practices, but the genuine 

 progress of the labor movement will be 

 substantially advanced every time such de- 

 served defeat is administered. 



ARBITRATION. 



While this progress is being made 

 toward the atttainment of better things 

 and substantial results are awaited, the 

 public properly searches for a means of 

 preventing or mitigating the annoyances 

 and losses that spring from the interrup- 

 tion of production caused by labor con- 

 flicts. Until employers and employees 

 learn such sweet reasonableness in bargain- 

 ing together as to avoid strikes how shall 

 their number and their evil consequences 

 be reduced? Obviously the demand is for 

 a temporary remedy for a difficulty which 

 ought ultimately to disappear. With this 

 fact kept carefully in view it is safe to con- 

 sider the remedy of arbitration. This has 

 actually but one form. To be arbitration 

 at all it must be wholly voluntary. The 

 term compulsory arbitration is self-contra- 

 dictory, and however it may be disguised 

 it really means the creation of a new type 

 of court endowed Avith authority to make 

 contracts relating to labor sei'vices. Arbi- 

 tration — voluntary arbitration — is a term 

 so grateful to the ear to which it comes as 

 a substitute for the clash of bitter indus- 

 trial struggles that it seems ungracious not 

 to commend it without qualification. If 

 men can not agree what can be better than 

 to submit their differences to the settle- 

 ment of a disinterested and impartial third 

 party? If men can not agree. This qual- 

 ification begs the entire question. Reason- 

 able men can agree and unreasonable men 

 nuist become reasonable or be replaced, in 

 industrial affairs, by those who are. One 

 way in which unreasonable men arrange for 

 their own replacement is by getting them- 

 selves into situations out of which they can 



not be extricated except through the as- 

 sistance of others. The adjustments of in- 

 dustry are too delicate to endure, without 

 injury to all concerned, the frequent inter- 

 ference of the disinterested. A strong 

 personal interest is the element which is 

 most effective in preventing irreparable 

 mistakes. Arbitration may be the smaller 

 of two evils, but no one should fail to rec- 

 ognize it as an evil. Aside from the fact 

 that it leaves the determination of matters 

 of primary industrial importance to per- 

 sons who will neither gain nor lose by the 

 success or failure of the industry, it is evil 

 in its consequences, because, when there is 

 reason to rely upon its being arranged for, 

 that fact constitutes an incentive to 

 making, and insisting vipon, unreasonable 

 demands. The easy-going policy which 

 consents to the submission of questions 

 vitally concerning the welfare of an enter- 

 prise to persons who have no stake in its 

 success naturally leads to the easy-going 

 method en the part of arbitrators which 

 is expressed by 'splitting the difference' 

 between the conflicting demands of both of 

 the contending parties. This is the almost 

 uniform result of arbitration. If you will 

 turn to the decision and award of the re- 

 cent Anthracite Coal Strike Commission 

 you will find that that ablest and mcst im- 

 partial of arbitration boards was not able 

 to avoid this nearly inevitable result. In 

 its pages you will read the contradiction 

 of every substantial averment of the strik- 

 ing mine workers. You will find that the 

 wages of the employees of the anthracite 

 operators did not, in April, 1902, compare 

 unfavorably Avith those of bituminous 

 miners or men in other employments of 

 similar character. You will find that the 

 conditions of life and the standard of 

 living in the anthracite counties of Penn- 

 sylvania were not lower than in comparable 

 regions. You will find that the basis of 

 payment was not unfair to the workmen. 



