ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 145

Altho the original award was handed down in 1918, the
Administration of the Packing House plants continued for
three years after the Armistice, and the original and succeeding
 decisions had a very strong post-war effect so far
as the living-wage movement was concerned. In this
connection, Mr. Justice Alschuler said:

The evidence for the employees, and employers as well, is
unanimous to the effect that whatever the economic work-day
is found to be, it should, under normal conditions, afford to
the workmen a day’s living wage for himself and family of
average size—generally considered to be a wife and three
children of about school age. The proposition itself is too
clear to require elaboration. The superintendents agreed that
while so-called market price of labor, as evidenced by what
other industries pay for it, should have some influence, yet in
ny event it should be a living wage.
While it might seem that the term “living wage” should
itself fix its boundaries and convey its significance, it is one
of those phrases not capable of exact definition, but is quite
dependent on the view-point of the one who employs it.
While it might generally be understood to be a wage offering
a living suited to one’s condition in life, it could hardly be
said, when an unreasonably low wage causes the condition
in life of the employee to sink low, even tho his family
manages to subsist thereon, that the condition of life of his
family is thereby established, and that the wage paid is suited
thereto. A living wage surely imports something more than
this. On the other hand, the common laborer’s living wage
cannot under the existing order of things be said to include
extravagances and superfluities which only those of large
means can afford

As early as 1920, the Federal Electric Railways Commission,
 appointed by President Wilson for the purpose
of recommending financial and other measures for the
rehabilitation of the street railways after the war. in its