ABSTRACT
The wage-bargain reverses completely the first principles of the credit-bargain, for it substitutes non-enforcement of contract for enforcement. The wage-earner is a tenant-at-will of either party. The capitalist system has been built up on the enforcement and negotiability of contracts, and it is as difficult for the lawyer to appreciate the custom of employer and employee in breaking labor contracts as it was for the lawyers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries to authorize the custom of merchants in enforcing promises and buying and selling them. Out of the wage-bargain a constitution for industrial government is being constructed by removing cases from the prerogative of management and the arbitrary power of unions and subjecting the foremen, the superintendents and the business agents to the same due process of law as that which governs the laborers.
