ve already been dealt with in the previous discussion
of the effect of standardization upon the distribution of employment.
There is no need of enumerating them again in this place. One point of
difference should be observed, however. The differences of individual
efficiency among the workers that would be affected by the living wage
policy are more substantial than the differences of individual
efficiency among the members of the more skilled wage earners. And,
therefore, while it would be unnecessary to make any special provision
for the least efficient members of the more skilled groups upon the
introduction of standardization, it might at the start be decidedly good
policy to make special provision for the least efficient members of the
unskilled groups. Under practically all living wage legislation special
provision is made for them.

It should also be remarked in this connection, that the probable greater
range of individual efficiency among the unskilled as compared with the
skilled is in some measure to be attributed to their present low wage
levels. Inefficiency is likely to grow upon itself. Mr. Aves has
remarked pertinently in this regard, "As with the 'unemployed' or the
'unfair employer' so with the 'incompetent' and the 'slow,' none of
these represent well defined classes. All are elastic. Some can be
created and all merge by imperceptible degrees into the classes
above."[128] The enforcement of a living wage policy, it may be hoped,
would in itself reduce the range of individual efficiency among the
unskilled. For it would keep from the ranks of the "incompetent" and
"slow" some who might have found place elsewhere had their chances been
somewhat better.

We turn to the third possibility--that as a result of enforcement of a
living wage policy there will be an increase in numbers in those groups
who fall within its scope. Here the pertinent factors are: Firstly, the
movement out of the lowest paid groups into those more favorably placed,
owing to the effect of increased wages upon individual capacity and the
use of individual opportunity; secondly, upon the movement from other
groups into the groups affected by the living wage policy, due to the
wage increases brought about by the policy, and thirdly, upon the effect
of these wage increases upon the frequency of family labor, and upon
the age of entry into and retirement from industry.

8.--So much, then, for the possible undesirable consequences of t