PRE-WAR PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 41 
fixing. On the other hand, the “subsistence standard,” 
with the necessary wage to support it, had been effectively 
advanced as the minimum below which wages should not 
be permitted to fall. Immediately before our declaration 
of war, a higher basic standard, designated as that of 
“minimum health and comfort,” had also been put forward 
as a further check upon the low earnings arising from the 
commodity theory of wages. The sanction of public 
opinion had also been given in the Clayton Act of 1916 
to the declaration that labor was not a commodity or 
article of commerce. 
In addition to these minimum standards of wage-deter- 
mination, the more comprehensive principle known as 
“increased productive efficiency,” or the right of employees 
to share in the productive gains of industry in accordance 
with their contributions thereto, had been very ably pre- 
sented by some of the railroad “Brotherhoods” against 
the opposition of the railway managers. 
None of these new opinions or theories, however, had 
been widely sanctioned by public opinion or by the formal 
decisions of arbitration boards. They were being urged 
and discussed, and opinion was beginning to be centered 
upon them as bases for possible changes in practise in 
wage-adjustments, when the current of thought and action 
was temporarily but entirely diverted as the result of the 
war emergency ” 1517