LABORS NEW STATUS 281 
Despite the fact that here in the United States the wage- 
earning class as a whole is better off than any other laboring 
population has ever been anywhere in the world, our indus- 
trial system contains certain grave defects and presents 
certain very menacing features. 
First, as regards wages. No competent authority denies 
that an annual income of fifteen hundred dollars a year is 
necessary for the decent support of a husband and wife and 
three children in any city of America, or that considerably 
more than that amount is required in our largest cities. 
Nor does any well informed person deny that a very large 
proportion, probably a majority, of our male wage-earners 
receive less than fifteen hundred dollars a year. 
Some persons who are aware of these facts belittle their 
.mportance with the comforting assumption that these under- 
paid wage-earners are somehow made of different clay and 
therefore can readily get along with less than the normal 
requisites of life. Other complacent persons reflect that a 
majority of these underpaid males are probably unmarried 
and probably do not need a family wage. 
All such persons need, first of all, to examine the pertinent 
facts, They ought to inquire whether it is really true that 
the underpaid workers and their families differ so greatly 
from their fellows that they can live decent human lives on 
less than decent wages. Such an inquiry honestly made 
would produce a disquiet of conscience in any person capable 
of that feeling. A similar reaction would be experienced by 
any well-disposed person who considers fully the implications 
of a situation through which a very large number of adult 
males are compelled through lack of income to forego mar- 
riage and family life indefinitely. 
Previously, in November, 1927, Professor Irving Fisher 
of Yale University had effectively shown that the “poorest” 
group in the country, or about 65 per cent. of the popula- 
tion of the United States, had not participated equitably 
in our unprecedented prosperity, and that their incomes