The rate of wages is a matter ever present to the mind of the worker. It is the question of most general discussion in normal times; but at all times there is a strange failure to appreciate the true facts of the position. The average workman thought, before the war, that his employer was always able to raise his rate of wages, if not to the particular level demanded, at any rate sufficiently to afford a substantial increase, and that only the employer’s selfishness stood in the way of this being done. Such most certainly was the opinion generally entertained by Labour when, during the war, the State became virtually the employer. Time after time bodies of workmen told me in perfect good faith that there was no difficulty whatever in the Government paying the rate of wages which they claimed. It seemed to them wholly immaterial that they were being paid, not out of the product of their work, but out of money borrowed by the State, with all the consequent inflation of currency and rise of prices. While, at the end of the war, many of the more enlightened Labour leaders appreciated, and a few, whom I honour, publicly denounced, the futility of the mad race of wages after prices, the average workman never was able to grasp it. There was a simple way, he thought, of compensating him for increased prices—merely to raise wages. Much of our industrial trouble to-day is due to the spurious appearance of prosperity which was caused by the high nominal wages of the war-period, and to the notion engendered in the mind of Labour that the Government could now, by resorting once more to war-time methods of controlling industry, create the same prosperity as existed immediately after the war. There is a foolish belief even among moderate men that the Government refrains from doing so in the interests of employers, in order to bring about a reduction of wages and a retrogression in conditions of employment, and to weaken the power of the Trade Unions. Discontent and its Causes One who moves among the workers cannot fail to be struck with the discontent which permeates them. Some people call it “industrial unrest,” and condemn it as a menace to society; they forget that discontent with existing conditions is an essential element of progress. Society advances, not by uniform and rhythmic strides in a fixed direction, but by convulsive movements which, if plotted on a plan, would present the appearance of gyrations to right and left of the axis of progression, but generally register a forward march. In our democratic organization of society, where the mutual relations of constituent elements of the community are so generally governed by common-sense compromise, no section that was passive could ever hope to better its social conditions.