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