26 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

This public declaration brought to the forefront the social
and human side of the wage problem and repudiated the
theory that the price of labor, as in the case of ordinary
commodities, could be determined solely by the law of
supply and demand. The obvious conclusion was that
questions of humanity, as well as social and civic effects,
must be taken into consideration in fixing the compensation
of industrial workers. The embodiment of this fundamental
 principle in a Federal statute, aside from its bearing
upon the legal status of labor organizations, had a stimulating
 effect upon public opinion and upon the public attitude
toward the wage problem, and really signalized the breaking
 away from the old view-points in determining the compensation
 of labor.

Tuk STANDARD OF “HEALTH AND MODEST
CoMFORT”’

Under these conditions, it was but a step to the development
 of further principles in connection with the theory
of what a basic wage should be. This was brought forward
 in the form of a declaration that a bare physical level
for the lowest-paid workers was not sufficient ; that the
subsistence standard had been advanced merely to show
the danger-line below which earnings should not be permitted
 to fall; that the unskilled laborer and his family
as human beings were entitled to something more than a
bare animal existence; and that there should, therefore,
be made possible to them a standard of living of “modest
comfort and health,” with some opportunity for the ordinary
 decencies of life and for recreation.
This new conception or higher standard of protest
against the old law of supply and demand, which was
destined to have a tremendous influence in the future,
originated on the Pacific Coast in the Departments of