PROBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION 239 
possibilities in such an industrial country 
as England at the present time. The method 
would not be acceptable to the majority of 
employers or employees, and it is highly doubt 
ful, despite the triumphs of different forms 
of industrial arbitration in New Zealand and 
Australia, whether the method would prove 
workable, at any rate under conditions such 
as we may reasonably forecast for our life 
time, in the enormously complicated inter 
relation of industries in advanced western 
countries. 
The wages problem in such surroundings 
is a profoundly difficult one because, our 
productive energies being guided by fore 
sight, wages may be regarded as governed 
by the reflection in anticipation of consumers’ 
innumerable demands on the one hand and 
the supplies of capital, labour and organising 
sagacity of their multitudinous kinds on the 
other side. Moreover consumers’ demands 
and the relative supplies of the different agents 
in production are constantly varying, so that 
the wages problem calls repeatedly for resettle 
ment. Now it is imperative that at each 
settlement the right wage should be approxi 
mately hit upon, because it is only when the 
right wage is discovered, and discovered 
rapidly, that production is kept appropriate