94 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
Justice Higgins, of the Australian Commonwealth Court 
of Conciliation and Arbitration, first declared that the 
principle of the “living wage” would be the foundation- 
stone of all industrial relations within the purview of that 
court. The Act of 1904 creating the Conciliation and 
Arbitration Court had provided that the minimum wages 
fixed by the court should be “fair and reasonable.” In the 
Harvester case of 1907, Mr. Justice Higgins stated that 
a “fair and reasonable” wage must mean a “living wage,” 
and he then gave his famous standard for the determina- 
tion of a living wage—“the normal needs of the average 
employee regarded as a human being in a civilized com- 
munity.” The “average” employee was also further 
described by this jurist as a married man with a wife and 
three dependent children. Since that time the living-wage 
principle has been accepted by every arbitration court in 
Australia. 
Its DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICA 
The origin and development of the living-wage principle 
in this country has already been set forth chronologically 
in- the preceding discussion. It will be recalled that in its 
early stages the movement took the form of a demand for 
an irreducible minimum wage, in order that industry and 
the State itself should be protected from the harmful 
effects of the low wage scales then prevailing, This mini- 
mum was first known as the “subsistence level” of living. 
It did not go farther than to provide for the bare physical 
needs of industrial workers and their families. It was a 
wage which was sufficient to maintain an average employee 
and his family only one step above poverty and dependency. 
During the years immediately preceding the entrance of 
America into the World War, a further advance was made. 
"1Ex Parte, H. V. McKay, 2 Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, p. 1.