[50 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

prosperity or adversity in automatic fashion, and thus
removes no small part of the occasion for conflict between
employers and employed. It is not ideally just in operation,
and is not readily applicable to most industries, though more
widely applicable than applied. In case of a considerable
and permanent change in prices, the scale would be apt to
give either more or less than was contemplated when it was
settled. The agreement on a new basis for a scale provides
as wide a scope for industrial conflict as ordinary disputes
about wages where no scale is used. Yet some increase of
smoothness in industrial relations, and of stability of conditions
 touching wages, is assured where such scales operate,
and the very crudity of the approximation to justice which
they afford ensures that simplicity which makes them
intelligible, and thus aids in ensuring support and trust
One weak point is that workmen are induced to believe
that their employers resist reduction of price less strenuously
when that reduction carries with it a lessened wages-bill.