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Rh perform proportionately more work that has fallen upon them (see Chapter VI).

The position of railway labor is quite different and in no wise uncertain. It has taken a largely increasing share of the national income, which of course has been at the expense of other classes of people. This is true of every industry wherein the index of wages is higher than the general economic index unless there has been an offsetting increase in the efficiency of the labor. With respect to railway labor that has not been the experience (see Chapter VI) and probably it bas not been so with any major branch of labor.

In every industry we may expect to find inequalities among the subdivisions of labor, just as there has been between the trainmen and maintenance men of the railways. This shows the difficulty of trying to regulate such things arbitrarily and not leaving them to the working of the natural law of supply and demand. In the instance of the railways we have had the restrictions not only of labor unions, but also of governmental impositions.

Railway transportation affords the data for such a study as is comprised in this paper as does no other industry. It is certain, however, that if mining, building, manufacturing, local distribution, etc., could be studied in the same way they would exhibit similar things, i.e., in general the capturing of an increasing proportion of the national income by their wage earners in somewhat the ratio that their indicia of wages has exceeded the general economic index.

It is clear that the wage advances that the railways have made since 1914 have been at the expense of their net earnings, their freight rates not having been