WAGES NOT UNIFORM — NON-COMPETING GROUPS 55
shift may endure so long that the standards themselves may
change. There is as much evidence to show shift in the standards
of living of different classes as there is to show fixity. It may
fairly be maintained that when we pass beyond the forces of
demand (which are in any case determinant only over many years)
and try to examine the forces of supply, we do reach not a domain
of fixity but one of constant flux.
If this be the just view, it follows that the impact of reciprocal
international demand is not separate from that of reciprocal
domestic demand, but merges with it and becomes part of one
combined force. For example, we have supposed, in a previous
illustrative case, that the linen makers of Germany are in a lower
group, less well paid than other German workers. While German
wages in wheat are $1.00, they are but $0.75 in linen. Why the
difference ? Is it due to settled standards of living in the several
groups? To supply or to the play of demand? We may hesitate to
go further than say that the numbers of persons in the other groups
and the keenness of their demand for linen, compared to the number
of the linen-workers and the keenness of their demand for the
other products, have combined to bring about by a quasi-mechan-
ical process the stated differences in the wages of the German
exchanging groups. If this then be regarded as the initial situa-
tion — that established in Germany when isolated — and if we
suppose her thereafter to be confronted with a demand for linen
from the United States, this new demand for German linen is
added to the former demand from the German workers themselves.
The play of demand is altered to the advantage of the linen workers.
The relations between the groups within Germany become differ-
ent ; the linen workers get higher prices for linen and higher wages
for themselves.
How important in practice is the general train of reasoning
followed in this chapter? Are we to conclude that the more
simple analysis with which we started, resting on the assumptions
of homogeneity in labor groups and uniformity in wages, becomes
quite inapplicable where there are heterogeneous social and indus-
trial conditions and wide diversities of wages in any one country ?
