product with relative peace and
satisfaction. It is necessary and permissible, as has been remarked, to
separate this problem from other closely related problems. However, any
policy of wage settlement that might be adopted would be also an
important influence in other industrial issues outside of those it
settles directly. It would affect in numberless ways the relations
between the groups concerned in production. It follows that no policy of
wage settlement will work successfully unless it accomplishes two ends.
First, it must represent convincingly the effort to divide the product
of industry so as to satisfy the most widely held conceptions of justice
in the industrial system. Second, it must contribute, wherever it is a
factor, to such an adjustment of industrial relations as will command
the voluntary support of all groups whose cooperation is necessary for
the maintenance of industrial peace.

For the accomplishment of these two objects, any policy must be based
upon a knowledge of the present economic position of the various groups
engaged in industry, and of the present state of industrial relations
between them. It is obviously impossible to review these matters
adequately in this book. The most that can be attempted is a brief
survey of those aspects of these questions with which the problem of
wage settlement must definitely concern itself. Such a survey will
occupy this chapter. If it serves no other purpose, it will serve the
important one of making clear the source of certain general
presuppositions with which the problem of formulating a policy of wage
settlement for industrial peace is approached.

2.--It is convenient to deal with the general field under survey by
considering in the order stated, the present economic position, firstly,
of the wage earners; secondly, of those who own invested capital; and
thirdly, of those who direct industrial activity. Questions of
industrial relationship between these groups can then be presented at
the point at which they arise most pertinently. Such a loose order as
this is dictated by the desire to avoid all questions except those which
inevitably arise when studying the problem of wage settlement.

To begin with the wage earners. The task of giving exact scope to the
term "wage earners" may be shirked. The term may be taken to include, at
least, all those grades of workers whose incomes would be governed
directly by any scheme of wage settlement. When using