ABANDONMENT OF OLD-TIME THEORIES 89 
for determining what share of the product rightfully belongs 
to the laborer; it merely aims to keep real wages at a constant 
level. Thus, the assumption upon which it rests is that the 
wage received prior to the demand for advance is a fair and 
adequate wage. 
In the arbitration award covering points of difference in 
1924 between the Worcester Consolidated Street Railway 
and the Springfield Street Railway, and its employees, the 
chairman of the arbitration board, Mr. Lewis C. Parker, 
disposed of all arguments based upon supply and demand, 
as follows: 
While the law provides for public regulation of a street 
railway as a public utility as before stated, it does not control 
or supervise the settlement of wage and other disputes be- 
tween the street railway and its employees, yet the great 
public benefit and necessity of street railways, and the great 
social, commercial, industrial and economic waste caused by 
strikes, let alone the attendant disorders and public incon- 
venience, make it essential that all disputes between street 
railways and their employees as to wages, hours and working 
conditions be settled, if agreement be not possible from con- 
ference, by Arbitration. The law of supply and demand as 
a means of settling wage and other disputes between a street 
railway and its employees is a relic of the past and should 
not be considered in this period of social progress. 
The United States Railroad Labor Board also formally 
repudiated the commodity theory of wage determination. 
[n a decision in 1922 it stated: 
In this connection it should be said that the Labor Board 
has never adopted the theory that human labor is a com- 
modity to be bought and sold upon the market, and conse- 
quently to be reduced to starvation wages during the periods 
of depression and unemployment.? 
1 United States Railroad Labor Board, Decision No. 1074 (Docket 1300), 
affective July 1, 1922.