Though wages had fallen relative to 1929, so had prices. In practice, the Depression brought very little relief to real wage costs.9 In so far as wage bills had been reduced it was not by cutting real wages but by firing workers and placing the rest on short time. Nevertheless, when the wage freeze of 1933 was combined with the destruction of the trade unions and a highly permissive attitude towards business cartelization, a point to which we shall return, the outlook for profits
