Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/133

 Mr. Snowden is undoubtedly right in calling attention to a check, which showed itself at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the improvement of the position of the wage-earner. Wages rose little or not at all in money, and prices were rising. Whether he was right in assuming that the tendency was a permanent one, we shall never know, because the war intervened, upsetting the whole economic basis of society, and giving the workers a chance of sustained improvement, of which there is every reason to hope they will take full advantage; but it is at least possible that Mr. Snowden was wrong in assuming that the tendency for the buying power of wages to go back was permanent. It might have been merely the falling back of a wave in a rising tide, to have been followed by a still more rapid improvement, thanks to the determination shown by the wage-earners in the year before the war, to take drastic measures to improve their position. However this may have been, there can be no doubt that under the system of Capitalism the wage-earners did during the whole second half of the past century achieve a great and almost unbroken improvement in their lot, an improvement which was