62 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
8. Ethical Forces 
A legal system which should protect all interests is unthinkable, 
no matter how much it might be developed. And where the law 
ends, the peculiar realm of ethical obligation begins. One of the 
striking developments of the present generation is the recognition 
of common interests and collective obligations of a moral nature, 
and the formulation of codes of fair practice by great numbers 
of trades. And many of the unwritten codes are more powerful 
than the written. Some of the articles of some of these codes 
have tremendous force; such as the unwritten article which, if 
violated, brings down on the violator the epithet: “scab.” Others 
are probably little more than words on paper. The question 
what these codes really are and how they operate, as well as how 
they need to operate to perform their social function satisfactorily 
— this is a fascinating inquiry with which very little has as yet 
been done. And it is an essential part of any survey of repre- 
sentative economic forces. 
Another question is how much the sense of right and wrong 
alters the bargaining force with which persons and groups strive 
to further their interests. To what extent will a sense of the 
inequity of the terms offered to labor lead the worker to submit 
to unemployment rather than accept? To what extent may a 
similar sense of a fair wage in the mind of the employer himself 
lead him to refrain from taking advantage of the opportunities 
for depressing wages which would be afforded by the unmiti- 
gated law of supply and demand, in time of business depression 
and unemployment? To what extent is a sense of inequity one 
of the forces back of certain varieties of restriction of output by 
labor? To what extent is a strike a moral phenomenen, and to 
what extent are the outcomes of strikes governed by moral forces? 
9. Competition: Its Various Degrees 
Considering the central part which competition plays in 
economic theory, singularly little effort has been spent defining it. 
For static purposes, it can perhaps best be defined as whatever 
behavior among independent producers is necessary to bring 
about one price for one good in one market, at the level of 
“normal” expenses of production. Under actual conditions, price 
does not tend to an exact level on a typical market, normal 
expense of production is an inference rather than an observable