e is really required for the greater efficiency
of the industry itself, or in the national interest, the fact that it
might involve a temporary increase in the price of coal would not be
conclusive against it. Moreover, if hours of labor have been reduced in
other industries, and if the standard of life has been advanced among
other sections of the community, it would be unsuitable to withhold a
similar advance from the miners, merely because the others have got in
first."[138]

In short, under any scheme of wage relationship based on the
preservation of existing differentials, it could not be established in
the face of any claim that the relative position of a group was
determined either by consideration of justice, or by implacable
necessity. Therefore, that scheme would not receive the constant and
widespread support requisite to its successful operation.[139]

So far then, in this chapter, two conclusions have been reached.
Firstly, that the course of wage settlement in each industry or
occupation cannot be a process entirely independent from the course of
wage settlement in every other industry and occupation. Secondly, that
although the first step in the establishment of any scheme of wage
relationship is the acceptance of existing wage levels and
differentials, the policy must provide for the reconsideration of these
differentials in the light of affirmed principles; with the aim of
gradually evolving in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship,
upheld by common consent to the principles on which it rests.

4.--Thus we are put under the necessity of attempting to formulate
principles or standards by which all claims made by groups of wage
earners for reconsideration of existing wage differentials could be
judged. This is not a task to be lightly undertaken. Nor is it to be
expected that such clear principles of wage relationship can be
elaborated as to escape the necessity of deciding many claims by an
appeal to compromise and by taking refuge in a general sense of equity.
All that it is hoped to do is to suggest certain lines along which a
satisfactory formulation of the required principles of wage relationship
may be sought.

It might be possible gradually to construct such an ordered scheme of
wage relationship as has been declared essential to industrial peace by
applying to successive wage controversies, as they arose, two central
doctrines. These doctrines are: Firstly, the doctrine of the unit