ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

96

efforts to accumulate stocks had over-stimu-lated it. Unemployment succeeded Profiteer-ing as the problem of the hour.

(iii) The Earner

It has been a commonplace of economic text-books that wages tend to lag behind prices,with the result that the real earnings of thewage-earner are diminished during a period ofrising prices. This has often been true in thepast, and may be true even now of certainclasses of labour which are ill-placed or ill-organised for improving their position. But inGreat Britain, at any rate, and in the UnitedStates also, some important sections of labourwere able to take advantage of the situation notonly to obtain money wages equivalent in pur-chasing power to what they had before, but tosecure a real improvement, to combine thiswith a diminution in their hours of work (and,so far, of the work done), and to accomplishthis (in the case of Great Britain ) at a time whenthe total wealth of the community as a wholehad suffered a decrease. This reversal of theusual course has not been due to an accidentand is traceable to definite causes.

The organisation of certain classes of labour—railwaymen, miners, dockers, and others—for the purpose of securing wage increases isbetter than it was. Life in the army, perhapsfor the first time in the history of wars, raisedin many respects the conventional standard of