ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 121 
demands, will somehow reach a balance between them as to 
what in the long run constitutes a general saving wage, 
This is no new thing. For some time the most forward- 
looking of our employers have been paying the saving wage 
as a matter of course, perhaps without knowing it. My con- 
tention is that what these enlightened employers have been 
doing must become general. Sooner or later all the rest will 
have to catch up to them. I believe public opinion will com- 
pel it. Without our knowing it, great social changes have 
been working themselves out among us, and prominent in this 
evolution is the worker’s demand for his share in the larger 
benefits of this new day. He is no longer a mere worker at 
a bench, an automaton. His intelligence has been expanded 
by new and rapid experiences. His tastes have been height- 
ened along with the increase in his intelligence. He too has 
risen to the enjoyment of books, of pictures, music, the 
theater, a chance at the higher edueation, to cite but a few 
of his new demands. In other words, the newly enlightened 
workingman has risen to a new place as a human being and 
as a member of our rich community. Conscious of having 
taken that place, he is now entitled to insist upon enjoying 
all the advantages of it. Nor should we object to this, for 
it means the permanent enrichment of us all, in that the 
advancement of human society is always to be measured by 
the advancement of the worker himself. 
The desirability of adding to the living wage standard, 
as generally advocated, an allowance for reasonable sav- 
ings, has been generally realized and accepted. In the 
earlier living-wage movement, the need for savings had 
been recognized, but the point had not been stressed 
because in its practical aspects it was felt that emphasis 
should first be placed upon the necessity of raising the 
lower family incomes to the point where they would afford 
at least a healthy and decent standard of living, and after 
this had been done the question of provision for savings