20 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
who, instead of engaging in outside employment or taking 
boarders and lodgers in the home, should have had their 
energies free to devote exclusively to their children and 
their households. It was therefore apparent that compe- 
tition, or the free play of the forces of supply and demand, 
in determining wages for these classes, should be so 
checked that the lowest wage-rates should not fall below 
the danger point—the point where the wage-earner and his 
family could not satisfy elementary subsistence needs. 
THE RESULTS OF BUDGETARY STUDIES 
Investigations were made to determine what this basic 
wage-rate should be. These inquiries consisted of budg- 
etary studies for the purpose of ascertaining what the 
minimum requirements for food, shelter, fuel, clothing 
and lighting of an average unskilled wage-earner’s family 
would cost on the basis of contemporaneous prices. Scien- 
tific analyses were prepared as to the food values necessary 
for workingmen and their wives and children of school 
age. Computations were then made as to the outlay neces- 
sary for food ordinarily purchased by wage-earners in 
order to provide proper nourishment on the basis of these 
scientifically determined food requirements. Direct investi- 
gations were also conducted in industrial localities to find 
out the cost of necessary housing, clothing, fuel, and light 
and sundries. These items were then brought together, 
and their aggregate cost disclosed the amount of family 
income essential to the physical maintenance alone of an 
average wage-earner’s family. No allowance was made 
for comforts, luxuries, recreation, or savings. The mini- 
mum budget represented the minimum cost of bare sub- 
sistence. 
As early as 1901, the United States Bureau of Labor 
had made a general study of more than 25,000 families of