ABSTRACT
When in practice it is decided to interfere with wages anywhere, either because they are “unfair” or for any other reason, there is at once presented a new problem. Effective interference involves either the authoritative award of a new wage rate or encouragement to employers and employed to agree upon a new wage rate. Movements in the employers’ demand for the commodity the labour is helping to make are derived directly from movements in the public demand for the commodity. The liability to oscillation of that demand is, of course, different for different classes of commodities. When the demand for labour in any industry fluctuates in a given measure, the appropriate consequent fluctuation in the rate of wages is not, of course, determined by the size of the demand fluctuation alone. It depends also on how elastic the demand for labour in the industry is and how elastic the supply.
