II

INFLATION AND DEFLATION

97

requirements,—the soldier was better clothed,better shod, and often better fed than thelabourer, and his wife, adding in war time aseparation allowance to new opportunities toearn, had also enlarged her ideas.

But these influences, while they would havesupplied the motive, might have lacked themeans to the result if it had not been for anotherfactor—the windfalls of the profiteer. Thefact that the business man had been gaining,and gaining notoriously, considerable windfallprofits in excess of the normal profits of trade,laid him open to pressure, not only from hisemployees but from public opinion generally;and enabled him to meet this pressure withoutfinancial difficulty. In fact, it was worth hiswhile to pay ransom, and to share with his work-men the good fortune of the day.

Thus the working classes improved theirrelative position in the years following the war,as against all other classes except that of the“profiteers.” In some important cases theyimproved their absolute position—that is tosay, account being taken of shorter hours, in-creased money wages, and higher prices, somesections of the working classes secured forthemselves a higher real remuneration for eachunit of effort or work done. But we cannotestimate the stability of this state of affairs, ascontrasted with its desirability, unless we knowthe source from which the increased reward ofthe working classes was drawn. Was it dueto a permanent modification of the economic