  If, as is commonly accepted, the colour-singlet, `preconfined', perturbative
clusters are the primary units of hadronization, then the electric charge is
necessarily compensated locally at the scale of the typical cluster mass. As a
result, the minijet electric charge is suppressed at scales that are greater
than the cluster mass. We hence argue, and demonstrate by means of Monte Carlo
simulations using HERWIG, that the scale at which charge compensation is
violated is close to the mass of the clusters involved in hadronization, and
its measurement would provide a clue to resolving the nature of the dynamics.
We repeat the calculation using PYTHIA and find that the numbers produced by
the two generators are similar. The cluster mass distribution is sensitive to
soft emission that is considered unresolved in the parton shower phase. We
discuss how the description of the splitting of large clusters in terms of
unresolved emission modifies the algorithm of HERWIG, and relate the findings
to the yet unknown underlying nonperturbative mechanism. In particular, we
propose a form of $\alpha_S$ that follows from a power-enhanced beta function,
and discuss how this $\alpha_S$ that governs unresolved emission may be related
to power corrections. Our findings are in agreement with experimental data.
