— 4 —
which took place throughout 1925 and early in 1926, i.e.
during the period when the value of the currency was being
raised +,
For the cities belonging to the last group, except Madrid,
the gold wage curves fluctuated considerably during the period
under review. In Paris during 1925 and 1926 the index numbers
for gold wages were in some cases 10 or 20 points below pre-
war figures; this happened more rarely — and only in 1926 —
in Brussels, and was the exception in Rome. For Warsaw
there were three clearly marked movements: the rise in gold
wages which accompanied the early stages of currency reform;
the stabilisation which reflected the first results of the reform,
from the middle of 1924 to the middle of 1925; and the heavy
fall in gold wages resulting from the currency crisis after the
latter date. In Madrid the fluctuations were within narrower
limits, the currency crisis in Spain having been much less severe;
and the levels of gold wages remained constantly above pre-
war level.
These various diagrams show the effect of the disturbances
of the world market produced by the dislocation of the exchanges,
while at the same time suggesting, in a fairly large number of
cases, a tendency towards stabilisation, and a consequent
return to equilibrium.
Lack of space prevents us from publishing all the tables
relating to gold wages in the various cities under review which
have been prepared; figures for one of the categories, namely,
masons and bricklayers, are given to illustrate the method
adopted 2.
II. Real Wages.
As stated above, comparative statistics of the real wages of
workers in a certain number of typical occupations in the cities
enumerated above have been compiled by the International
Labour Office since July 1924. The method adopted in making
these comparisons is briefly as follews.
! The decrease in gold wages in ‘Oslo at the end of the first half of 1926 was due
to a heavy fall in nominal wages.
. ! This occupation has been chosen because data were available throughout the whole
period under review for all the towns considered.
fé For the period ending 1 April 1925, data for all the occupations taken will be found
in the Enquête sur la Production of the International Labour Office, T. V, Vol. 2, pp. 740-747.