PRE-WAR PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 23 
of arbitration proceedings, claimed that $1,210 a year was 
essential to meet the costs of the minimum requirements 
of their families. During the following year, the Legisla- 
tive Committee of the American Federation of Labor at 
a Congressional committee hearing on the so-called Nolan 
Bill providing a three-dollar-a-day minimum wage for 
government employees, submitted a budget of $766 as a 
minimum standard. In explaining this estimate, Mr. 
Arthur E. Holder, of the Legislative Committee, stated 
that $766 would “simply purchase a bare subsistence and 
is much below a decent living standard,” adding: “You 
will observe that I have tabooed every form of ‘luxury.’ 
Receiving $765.95 a year, there could be no riding on street 
cars for this workingman’s family, no tobacco, no candy, 
no books, no Sunday-school contributions, nothing for the 
church; no newspapers, no movies, no lodge dues, no 
insurance, no postage stamps and no doctor’s bills. . . .” 
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS AND PREVAILING WAGES 
From the foregoing summary, the significant point 
which stands out in connection with the historical develop- 
ment of the principles and methods of wage determination, 
is that from 1903 to 1916 a large body of opinion, sup- 
ported by budgetary estimates, prepared under public and 
private auspices, had as a rule fixed upon a sum ranging 
from $800 to $900 per annum as the annual income which 
an unskilled laborer and his family should receive in order 
to maintain a bare physical subsistence, and, as a conse- 
quence, the fixing of wages so as to yield at least this 
income was publicly advocated despite the fact that, under 
contemporaneous conditions, the family income of indus- 
trial workers was, as a rule, much less. The Federal 
[mmigration Commission’s investigation of 15,726 work- 
ingmen’s families in 1908-1909, in all branches of industry