THE WAR PERIOD—AN INTERREGNUM 47

in a broad general occupation, who had hitherto been
classified on a lower scale than skilled craftsmen, were
elevated to the skilled craft scale of pay.
As the net result, one of the most striking wartime
developments in the fixing of wages was the more or less
arbitrary, but practically necessary, standardization of
wage rates nationally or by extended districts, and also
by broad occupational definitions.
THE “Living WAGE”

Where rates of pay before the war had been too low to
permit of a standard of health and modest comfort for the
wage-earner and his family, it was claimed early in the war
that the index of living costs should be ignored and wages
should be arbitrarily increased to a point where the health
and efficiency of the workers would be maintained in the
face of the need for maximum production. Just as mazhinery
 should be kept at its highest efficiency, it was also
declared to be sound public policy, by proper wage increases,
 to conserve the human factor of production, or
labor, unimpaired. The maximum productive efficiency of
these classes of workers, it was held, would thus be mainlained,
 even tho it were necessary to raise their rates of
compensation much higher than would be indicated by
increased living costs. A policy of this kind, of course,
involved principally the unskilled workers at the bottom of
the scale of industrial occupations.
This fundamental exception to the general method of
procedure of changing rates in accordance with changes
in living costs, did not receive any formal sanction until
the establishment of the National War Labor Board in
the early part of 1918. The principles of the Board, after
sanctioning the usual wartime basis of wage-determination
by adjustment of wages to advances in living costs with