pread practice has been to increase all wage levels by the
same _absolute_ amount--which amount has been ordinarily calculated as a
percentage of some basic wage (frequently the living wage). The
advantages of that method are firstly, its simplicity, and secondly, the
fact that if it favors any groups, it favors those whose needs are
greatest. Justice Higgins has justified it as follows: "When the Court
has increased the basic wage because of abnormal increase of prices due
to the war it has not usually increased the secondary wage. It has
merely added the old secondary wage, the old margin, to the new basic
wage. It is true that the extra commodities which the skilled man
usually purchases with his extra wages become almost as indispensable in
his social habits, as the commodities purchased by the unskilled man,
and have no less increased in price; but the Court has not seen fit to
push its principles to the extreme in the abnormal circumstances of the
war, and the moderate course taken has been accepted without
demur."[144]

Still as a permanent policy, the suitability of this method is not
beyond question. The problem to be faced in the choice of method is,
after all, this. Given a scheme of wage differentials, which are in
accord with certain defined principles, at a given position of the price
level, what method of adjustment is best calculated to produce such
differentials as will be in accord with these principles, at all
positions of the price levels? That sounds like a problem in astronomy.
But it is not. It can be more understandably, but less accurately, put
by asking, what system of adjustment is best calculated to maintain the
same _relative_ position of the various groups of wage earners
throughout all price movements?

Under either of the two methods touched upon--that of change by equal
percentages, and that of change by the same absolute amount for all
groups--the differentials cannot be held in close accord with any such
original principles of wage relationship as have been suggested. It
cannot be helped. We have come to another point at which the aims of
policy can only be imperfectly realized.

It seems to me that the best method would be some sort of compromise
between the two alternatives that have been presented. A compromise
would make allowance, firstly; for the fact that in times of rising
prices, those groups whose wages are lowest cannot meet the rise in the
cost of living by changing thei