PRE-WAR PRINCIPLES AND METHODS 23 of arbitration proceedings, claimed that $1,210 a year was essential to meet the costs of the minimum requirements of their families. During the following year, the Legisla- tive Committee of the American Federation of Labor at a Congressional committee hearing on the so-called Nolan Bill providing a three-dollar-a-day minimum wage for government employees, submitted a budget of $766 as a minimum standard. In explaining this estimate, Mr. Arthur E. Holder, of the Legislative Committee, stated that $766 would “simply purchase a bare subsistence and is much below a decent living standard,” adding: “You will observe that I have tabooed every form of ‘luxury.’ Receiving $765.95 a year, there could be no riding on street cars for this workingman’s family, no tobacco, no candy, no books, no Sunday-school contributions, nothing for the church; no newspapers, no movies, no lodge dues, no insurance, no postage stamps and no doctor’s bills. . . .” MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS AND PREVAILING WAGES From the foregoing summary, the significant point which stands out in connection with the historical develop- ment of the principles and methods of wage determination, is that from 1903 to 1916 a large body of opinion, sup- ported by budgetary estimates, prepared under public and private auspices, had as a rule fixed upon a sum ranging from $800 to $900 per annum as the annual income which an unskilled laborer and his family should receive in order to maintain a bare physical subsistence, and, as a conse- quence, the fixing of wages so as to yield at least this income was publicly advocated despite the fact that, under contemporaneous conditions, the family income of indus- trial workers was, as a rule, much less. The Federal [mmigration Commission’s investigation of 15,726 work- ingmen’s families in 1908-1909, in all branches of industry