16 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

demic circles, as well as in industrial life itself, the old
order of thinking prevailed, in which the law of supply
and demand was predominant. No hope of immediate
betterment was held before industrial workers. Habits of
saving, limitation of numbers, or increased efforts and productivity
 were put forward only as long-time bases for
increased compensation. Even if these conditions were
realized, however, the situation seemed to be without practical
 hope, because of the small extent to which the supply
of labor was organized for collective bargaining purposes,
and because of the fact that the policy of unrestricted
immigration constantly made available a labor supply in
excess of the demand arising from the very rapid expansion
 in mining and manufacturing.
As the unskilled and semi-skilled wage-earners found it
difficult, if not impossible, to form and maintain organizations
 to protect themselves against the so-called inexorable
 law of supply and demand as applied to their rates
of pay, and as they were also confronted with the competition
 of an unrestricted immigrant labor supply of low
standards, the economic condition of these classes of industrial
 workers in 1914, when the World War began, had
reached the danger line from both a human and a public
standpoint. Their real wages were not sufficient to maintain
 themselves and their families according to standards
of bare physical subsistence. In order to preserve family
life, wives and children were forced to supplement the
earnings of the heads of the family by seeking employment
 outside the home or as an alternative to destroy a
normal family life by taking boarders or lodgers into the
home. Children, even in their early teens, had to leave
school and go to work.
Some of the principal industries, such as textiles in all
its branches, as well as clothing manufacturing, largely