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 pro- 
ductivity were put forward only as long-time bases for 
increased compensation. Even if these conditions were 
realized, however, the situation seemed to be without prac- 
tical 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 expan- 
sion in mining and manufacturing. 
As the unskilled and semi-skilled wage-earners found it 
difficult, if not impossible, to form and maintain organi- 
zations to protect themselves against the so-called inex- 
orable law of supply and demand as applied to their rates 
of pay, and as they were also confronted with the compe- 
tition of an unrestricted immigrant labor supply of low 
standards, the economic condition of these classes of indus- 
trial 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 main- 
tain 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 employ- 
ment 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