198 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

ity per worker accounts largely for the higher wage levels
and living standards prevailing in the United States. . . .

THE PRESENT SITUATION AS TO WAGE FIXATION

Several noteworthy conclusions are apparent at the present
 time in the United States so far as the theory of productive
 efficiency as the basis of wage determination is concerned.
 Some of these are confined to the present situation
 and others are pregnant with significance as to the
future.

In the first place, industry has irrevocably committed
itself in a practical and concrete way to the attitude and
policy that wages may increase indefinitely so long as labor
costs are not increased or profits reduced. Constant wage
advances in recent years have been made on the basis of
this theory. This has been done in the way of general policy
without specific reference to the performance of definite
groups or occupations and without relating the increases
granted to any principle or method of determining what the
real share of labor in productive gains should be. This
technical and difficult problem, both from the standpoint
of industrial management and from that of social statesmanship,
 remains for future determination.
From the standpoint of organized labor, in the second
place, altho the productive efficiency theory was originally
put forward by its representatives, the real advance has
come, as has already been stated, as the result of the
change in the general attitude of industrial leadership,
which has coupled up the increased productive efficiency
theory with that of higher wages as the basis of increased
purchasing power and prosperity. Labor has quickly taken
advantage of this situation. It has not.as yet, however,
gone into details, Obviously, it must in time raise the specific
 issue of an adequate wage for those in the lowest