Excerpt from Wage Changes in Industry, September, 1914 December, 1920: Research Report Number 35, March, 1921 The period covered by the present investigation includes the industrial depression which began to develop in the spring of 1920 and with increasing force continued for the remainder of that year. This period was marked by a condition of general uncertainty in the industrial world, followed by widespread economic changes during the last months of the year. Many plants shut down entirely, though a much larger number continued operations on a restricted basis, involving either a reduction of working forces, a reduction in working time, or both. Irregularity and sharp uctuations of wage curves for several of the industries can no doubt be explained in part by the uncertainty as to future business conditions and in part by the elimination from time to time of wage-earners with low wage-earning capacity. Such elimination tended to increase the aggregate average hourly earnings for the remaining groups. Other factors, however, had an in uence, but their effect cannot so readily be interpreted for an industry as a whole, since it expressed itself in various ways in different establish ments of the same industry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."