ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 155 
method, or the study of what the actual requirements are 
to maintain a family in health and modest comfort. After 
the most careful and comprehensive investigation, the 
necessary quantities of food, clothing, household furnish- 
ings, and sundries are listed and are then priced. The 
aggregate of the prices of these items represents the wage 
which must be earned if the family standard of living is to 
be healthy, decent, and modestly comfortable. 
Actual experience has demonstrated the practicability of 
the budgetary method. It has been accepted as the only 
feasible method for determining minimum wages for 
women under the laws of a number of States, and, as is 
well known, this has been done with great practical success. 
What has been done on the basis of independent women 
workers, has been and can be successfully done in the 
basic industries for male heads of families. In Australia, 
Great Britain and other foreign countries the budget has 
long been successfully used for determining basic wage 
rates for all classes of wage-earners. 
The budgetary method, therefore, is not new either in 
theory or in practise. It long ago passed the experimental 
stage, and its soundness is now generally accepted. 
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AS TO A LIVING OR 
ADEQUATE Basic WAGE 
As the outcome of the movement which has been in 
progress for the past two decades relative to an adequate 
basic wage for the lowest grades of industrial workers, 
several conclusions stand out clearly and in a most sig- 
nificant way at the present time. 
In the first place, the principle of an adequate basic 
wage for industrial workers has been generally accepted 
and authoritatively sanctioned as desirable, not only from 
a humanitarian and civic point of view. but also from the