Under laissezfaire capitalism, wages were mainly settled through local bargains between labor and capital; governments had no say in the process. Th is changed during the war: industrialists competed for scarce labor through wage increases, while mounting worker mobilizations (to cope with the concurrent increases in cost of living) also pushed for higher wages. Here the state did intervene, acting promptly against this threat to capital accumulation by taking control of wage contracts. Th e words of the historian Samuel Hurwitz hold true for both countries: “it would be a mistake to think that on the whole the British worker was better off because of Government intervention. State interference in wage settlements ‘acted to keep the level of wages rather lower than would have otherwise been the case’” (Hurwitz 1949, 129).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 179