32 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES B. Minimum Health and Comfort Level Date Minimum Budgetary Estimate for Pacific Coast Workers, Doctor Jessica B. Peixotto, University of California ....ceeeeeeeeeeess..1917 $1,476.40 Budget Awarded in Seattle and Tacoma Street Railway Arbitra- tion .... .1917 1,505.60 | The contrast in the costs as well as in the fundamental conceptions of the two standards is apparent. The sig- nificance obviously consists in the accompanying demand, in connection with the higher standard, that the alleged law of supply and demand should not be permitted to force wage-rates to a mere physical level of existence, or, in other words, to a point where they would not yield sufficient earnings to enable a wage-earner to support his family in health and with reasonable comfort. Tae THEORY OF INCREASED PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY During the period immediately preceding the Great War, or during the years 1913-1915, another wage theory was also developed, which, altho then unaccepted, had a funda- mental and far-reaching effect upon future thinking and action. It was known at the time, and later, as the “theory of increased productive efficiency.” When first put for- ward it was attacked as “academic” and “visionary,” but later it was accepted by organized labor as the funda- mental feature of its constructive wage policy, and finally became the basis of the revolutionary program of industry itself after the World War. For these reasons its origin and development are of great interest. The minimum subsistence and health-and-comfort stand- ards of living and compensation, as advocated in the pre-