126 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

At the time the Board was created, differentials as between
the different crafts and occupations had already been established
 by past experience, precedents, and labor adjustments.
The Board, therefore, has had no difficulties to meet in the
way of differentials. It has practically recognized differentials
 which existed prior to its organization. In rendering
its decisions as to wages, the Board has based its action on
the relation existing between different classes of employees
and has maintained the preexisting differentials by adding to
or subtracting from each group of workers an equal or practically
 an equal number of cents per hour or day, according
as the award called for an increase or decrease in compensation.

The decisions of the Board have, therefore, been based
primarily on the increase or decrease in the cost of living
without regard to the adequacies of the basic wage in the
industry paid to unskilled labor, and, as a consequence, without
 regard to the adequateness of the rates of pay of all other
classes of workers of whatever skill or responsibility, for the
reason that the wages of the higher skilled workers are
necessarily related to the rate established for those at the
bottom of the scale. The history of the Board, therefore,
shows that it took the wage scale as it found it, and has
raised it or lowered it in accordance with the rise or fall in
retail prices of those articles which enter into the consumption
 of the railroad workers or their families. So far as we
know there has been no consideration given as to the adequateness
 of railroad wages beyond the possible assumption
contained in the decisions of the Board that—in view of the
fact that the Board has not discussed the matter—it has
accepted standards of compensation as it found them, deeming
 them to be just, reasonable and adequate. . . .

THE WAGE DECISION OF 1921

We had hoped that in 1920, when the work of the Board
began, and when there were unprecedented business and
trade activities and unprecedented railway traffic and income,