railway men, the bank clerks, the
printers, and the miners.

_Fourthly_--With a view to preventing those changes in the distributive
situation which may result from price movements, and which are
undesirable--judged by reference to the distributive outcome that is
sought--all wages including those prescribed under the living wage
policy should be promptly adjusted to movements in the general price
level. The measure of price change should be the movement of the index
number of prices of all the important commodities produced within the
country--the index number to be so weighted as to give a defined
importance (50 per cent. was suggested) to the prices of those classes
of foodstuffs, clothing, housing accommodation, and other commodities
upon which the wage earners spend a very great part of their income. The
policy of adjustment to be pursued in times of rising and falling prices
and the amount of wage adjustment to be undertaken in response to price
movements of different degrees and character--in short, all the rules by
which the adjustment of wages to price movements should be carried
out--were considered, at some length, in several of the earlier
chapters, and can hardly be produced satisfactorily in summary form.
Special care should be taken to protect the standard of life of the
least favorably placed groups of wage earners during periods of a rising
price level.

_Fifthly_--In order to bring about such a distributive outcome as will
recommend the policy of wage settlement to the wage earners and to the
community in general, some profits test should be devised. This profits
test should be used to mark and measure the distributive situation in
industry as a whole, indicating, as it will, the share in the product of
industry that is taking the form of profits. Whenever the general range
of profits in industry exceeds that profits return which is conceived to
be just and sound, the wages of all groups of workers should be
increased in an attempt to transfer the extra profits to the wage
earners. The calculation of the wage increase to be awarded, when the
profits test shows that the profits return in industry as a whole is
greater than that conceived to be a fair return, and the basis of
distribution of this wage increase among the various groups of wage
earners, were dealt with at some length and cannot be described more
summarily. In order to apply any profits test, such as the suggested
one, it would probably