58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
nesses. An Qhio 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 
ig the basic principle upon which the new economic edifice must be 
anchored. Competition has led to combination, and combination to 
