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 pres- 
ent time in the United States so far as the theory of pro- 
ductive efficiency as the basis of wage determination is con- 
cerned. Some of these are confined to the present situa- 
tion 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 states- 
manship, 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 spe- 
cific issue of an adequate wage for those in the lowest