Why is Pages giving me unnecessary white space at the bottom of pages?

I have removed the protection against widows/orphans for the WHOLE document. I have tried cutting out blank lines between paragraphs but that only forces the pages to have more white space (giving a bizarre look) at the bottom. I have viewed Invisible codes and there are no paragraph end codes. So frustrating. I recall the days of WordPerfect before Word killed it off at universities, when you could see the embedded codes if you wish and have complete control...