48 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
due consideration to the customs and standards of different 
localities, declared as binding upon the Board that: 
1. The right of all workers, including common laborers, to 
a living wage, is hereby declared. 
In fixing wages, minimum rates of pay shall be established 
which will insure the subsistence of the worker and his 
family in health and reasonable comfort. 
2. 
Obviously, this principle had developed from the street 
railway wage arbitrations at Seattle and San Francisco in 
the autumn of 1917, previously described, and from the 
Chicago Stockyards case of about the same date. It also 
soon became apparent that employers and representatives 
of the public, in originally accepting in conference the prin- 
ciple of a “living wage,” had not taken into account the 
real significance and implications incident to the practical 
application of the principle. 
At special executive sessions of the War Labor Board, 
held in Washington in July, 1918, the matter was thor- 
oughly considered in all its aspects. Experts from all 
parts of the country, including those who the previous year 
had assisted in the preparation of the Seattle and San 
Francisco “minimum standards of health and comfort,” 
testified. The Board also had budgetary studies prepared 
by their own staff, which showed the rate of wages re- 
quired to enable unskilled workers to maintain either a 
“subsistence standard” of living or a level of “health and 
reasonable comfort.” The resultant rates were so much 
higher in amount per hour, however, than those prevailing 
at the time, that the Board feared the dislocating effect 
upon production of practically applying the principle 
during the war period. 
After prolonged discussion and consideration, it was 
"1 Executive Proceedings of the National War Labor Board, Washington, 
July, 1918.