case of railway labor, by Mr. Stockett. "... The
employees maintain that the varying physical and traffic conditions in
the different roads should not constitute a basis for the payment of
various rates. It may be true, they hold, that physical conditions and
traffic peculiarities differ as between different roads, but it would
be impossible to determine a separate rate of pay for each special
condition. In the course of development of the railways conditions are
always changing. Grades may be leveled, additional tracks laid, curves
straightened, passenger and freight densities may differ from year to
year and from day to day. The attempt to determine the proper rates for
each different condition and to change them as conditions change, the
employees assert, is obviously absurd. The plan of fixing a standard
rate governing an entire district may be illogical and its basis
arbitrary, but it is deemed the best devised and does substantial
justice in a broader sense than any other system."[90]

Cases may arise, indeed, where the difference in the character of the
work performed really means that the same name covers two relatively
distinct occupations, and two or more quite different classes of wage
earners. Such cases are probably rare. In circumstances where the
constant differences between the character of the work performed by
workers is relatively great, it will usually be found that they are
distinguished into different groups.[91] It is a question of degree, of
course. And if the existing distinctions do not fit the facts, those
distinctions should be changed.[92]

In unorganized industries, it will sometimes be found that the
classification of occupations is very defective. If wage standardization
were to be introduced into those industries, it would be found necessary
to standardize occupations first. Such was the task undertaken, for
example, by the War Labor Board in the Worthington Pump and Machinery
case.[93]

4.--A third possible ground for limitation or variation of the principle
of standardization is the existence of differences in the cost of living
in the various main centers or regions to which a standard rate might be
applied. Such variation would be represented, for example, by a
collective agreement in accordance with which the wage scale at
different points was varied in accordance with the relative cost of
living at these points. Up to the present there has been a tendency to
disregard differe