ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 141

1922, and were extensively discussed in the press and on
the floors of legislative bodies. The living-wage question
was rapidly becoming an issue of national importance when
the discussion at length began to lose its intensity, due to
the revival of industry and business in 1923, and the
adoption of a new industrial plan of procedure which
stimulated the unprecedented development of industry
during the next five years, and which accepted productivity
and high rates of pay as fundamentals of prosperity.
[n the case of the United States Railroad Labor Board,
where the supreme effort was made to force the practical
acceptance of the living-wage principle, no direct action
was secured even after the late Senator Albert Cummins,
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce,
 had declared that the railroad employees were correct
 in interpreting the term “just and reasonable” wage,
as defined in the Transportation Act of 1920, as meaning
a “living wage.” Elaborate majority and minority opinions
were handed down by the Board. Altho the majority
refused the immediate acceptance of the living-wage principle,
 this action was conditional, and was made upon the
public declaration that further consideration would be
given the matter when economic conditions improved.
As early as July, 1920, in its first wage award (Decision
No. 2), the employees claimed that the Railroad Labor
Board had led them to believe that it had accepted the
living-wage principle. At that time the Board said:
The Board has endeavored to fix such wages as will provide
 a decent living and secure for the children of the wage
earners opportunity for education, and yet to remember that
no class of Americans should receive preferred treatment
and that the great mass of the people must ultimately pay a
great part of the increased cost of operation entailed by the
increase in wages determined herein.