A great diversity of practice characterized the attempts at adjustment which were made during the period of rapid price increase inaugurated by the war. No two agencies of adjustment used the same basis. Possibly the most widespread 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.