56 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

A large section composed of the less foresighted members
 of the capitalistic and managerial groups desired to
eliminate all wartime restrictions, especially in connection
with industrial relations. They looked upon the growth
of government regulation during the war as a menace.
They advocated freedom in fixing prices of commodities
and answered the popular post-war criticism against high
prices and profiteering by the claim that excessive prices
were due to high wages. To increase still more the rates
of pay of industrial workers was to their minds only
adding another link to the “vicious circle” of higher wages
and, in turn, higher prices.
Organized labor, on the other hand, was discontented
and impatient because rates of pay had not kept pace with
the rapid rise of living costs prior to the Armistice. After
the cessation of conflict and the gradual removal of government
 control of prices, this tendency became even more
pronounced. Real wages rapidly declined, and urgent
demands were made for higher rates of pay. Delays in
adjusting these demands led to a nation-wide strike of
bituminous coal miners in the autumn of 1919, and of a
so-called “outlaw” railroad strike of switchmen and other
employees in the early part of 1920. Railroad workers,
against the instructions of their own union officials, stopped
work and for several months caused serious dislocations
and breakdowns in the transportation systems.
There was, in addition, widespread dissatisfaction in
other basic industries, accompanied by many strikes. Individual
 workmen were restive under trade-union discipline.
The great majority claimed that they had borne a loss of
real wages during the war. Since the Armistice, they
further declared, the removal of price-control agencies had
resulted in such a skyrocketing of living costs, and in
such further decreases in real wages, that they had no