Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/118

skilled and unskilled, manual and non-manual labour, is visible in most countries. During the war, when money and real wages were rising, the lower male grades rose proportionately more than the higher, women more than men, children and young persons more than adults. After the war, when conditions became more normal, some of this change has been maintained. On the whole, in this and othercountries, the fall of skilled wage-rates during the depression has been greater than that of unskilled wage-rates. If, as is likely, this tendential equalisation of wage-rates continues to operate, it will have some effect in introducing a new saving habit into larger grades of the workers, whose former earnings left no margin for saving over their necessary oconventional standard of living. But so small is the proportion of the working class contribution as a whole to the new capital fund that for our particular problem this change is not significant. It is doubtful whether any change, which does not bring a considerable improvement both of real income and security to the workers as a whole, will appreciably increase the proportion of their contribution to the saving fund, and only if that improvement was obtained largely at the expense of the capitalist and other wealthy classes, would it make appreciably for an improved adjustment between spending and saving, production and consumption.

The other alterations in the relative condition of the professional and salaried middle classes and the agriculturists may fairly be held to cancel out in most industrially developed countries, where town life is relatively strong. Only in countries predominantly