170 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

processes of manufacture, through standardization of product
and simplification of distributive machinery. In other words,
better management has, where possible, taken up the slack and
effected necessary economies without intervention with wage
levels in any serious way. Of course, wage adjustments become
 necessary or advisable from time to time, but industry
appears to have departed from the practise, prevalent during
the chaotic war and post-war years, of raising or lowering
wage scales in establishments throughout an entire industry
almost simultaneously and in a drastic way. Such departures
from the accepted wage level as have occurred during recent
years, with few exceptions have been the result of individual
plant action, dictated by circumstances obtaining in that
particular establishment or locality, and have not reflected a
general policy for the industry as a whole.
Wages and Productive Efficiency
The question naturally suggests itself as to how long new
efficiencies in operation can compensate for the maintenance
of high wages in periods of depression or permit the increase
of wages without a corresponding increase in prices. It may
be that industry has so far accomplished only the most obvious
 improvements in process and shortening of operations;
that this movement, only in its infancy, may be developed
far beyond what can be imagined at the present time. On the
other hand, it may be that, particularly in certain types of
industries, the limit of possible improvement is already in
sight, and that beyond this point the best scientific effort will
be helpless before physical laws which cannot be circumvented.
 The future alone will hold the answer, but it is certainly
 too soon to doubt that substantial increase in the efficiency
 of operation in some fields is still to be made.
Labor's Share in Increased Efficiency
Another aspect of this same question relates to the right of
labor to share in the fruits of these economies. Labor's argument,
 briefly stated in general terms, holds that since, in the
final analysis, it is labor which applies and makes effective