THE WAR PERIOD—AN INTERREGNUM 45 
food, clothing, fuel, light, housing, and sundries weighted 
in accordance with the relative importance of different 
items in these average budgets. A continuing basis of 
measuring changes in living costs was thus obtained. 
These results or indices were accepted as official by all 
wartime wage adjustment agencies. In addition to original 
awards on wage controversies, the general policy was also 
adopted of making changes in wages after the lapse of a 
stipulated time in the future, usually by six-month periods, 
on complaint of one or both of the parties, based on varia- 
tions—as a rule upward—in living costs. Some awards 
carried clauses providing for automatic changes in wage- 
rates each six months, should there be important increases 
or decreases in the cost-of-living index. In still other 
instances, wage adjustment agencies, on their own motion 
and without complaint, raised wages as living costs rapidly 
mounted. This method of adjusting rates of pay to price 
advances was the fundamental wage policy followed during 
the war. 
STANDARDIZATION OF RATES oF Pay 
At first it was agreed by government officials, employers, 
and representatives of labor organizations, that in making 
adjustments of wages according to living-cost changes, 
local standards and the custom of localities should also be 
taken into consideration. This principle was practically 
abandoned after a time, however, for two reasons: (1) 
the intense competition for labor demonstrated the wisdom 
of having the same rates for similar work and services 
throughout the country, in order to avoid the migration 
of workers from one section to another because of the 
lure of better conditions and higher earnings ; and (2) pre- 
conceived notions as to variations in the cost of living in 
different geographical areas, which had previously been the