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 ma- 
zhinery should be kept at its highest efficiency, it was also 
declared to be sound public policy, by proper wage in- 
creases, 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 main- 
lained, 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