18 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

ried on by certain social agencies, was the most significant
feature of the period immediately preceding the war.
The facts as to wages and working conditions which had
been developed by governmental and private inquiries were
so startling and so fundamental in their industrial, social,
and civic significance that it was clearly apparent that they
could not continue to be ignored when considered from any
standpoint—whether one of humanity, public welfare, or
even from the point of view of profit or the future effectiveness
 and productiveness of industry. To students,
investigators, or industrial leaders with foresight, and to
all groups of enlightened public opinion, it became increasingly
 evident that industry needed a constructive program
for determining wages which (1) would lead to a wider
and more equitable dissemination of economic welfare,
(2) would make possible an upstanding, dependable citizenship
 in a self-governing republic such as ours, and
which (3) in conjunction with improved methods of management,
 would bring about greater productive efficiency
in industry, and a larger and more stable measure of
national prosperity.
The gradual emergence of this point of view was in
reality the most significant aspect of the pre-war period so
far as the determination of wages was concerned. Opinion
was slowly crystallizing toward changed principles and
practical methods when we entered the World War. This
interregnum, so to speak, temporarily put aside the movement
 then in progress, but the theories as to wage-fixing
which were being advanced in the years 1914-1916 without
 practical success, have finally become, as we shall see
later, the commonplaces of the post-war industrial world,
and have not only met with general acceptance and application,
 but in some of their aspects have been elaborated
and authoritatively sanctioned in a way that even the most