ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 11g 
wage-earner must not only be sufficient to provide the 
material necessities of life, such as food, clothing and 
shelter ; he must also get a sufficient wage to obtain a mod- 
est degree of comfort, to make “his house a home,” to 
insure him “the things truly worth living for.” The 
specific “things” mentioned were: 
1. Provision for education. 
2. Provision for recreation. 
3. A margin for savings. 
1. Freedom of action to insure full play to 
the individual's abilities. 
This conception was further elaborated and advocated 
by James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor, in a number of 
articles and addresses. The following quotation may be 
taken as representative of his attitude :? 
War first gave us the living wage as a thing to think about. 
Since then it has stayed with us as a phrase, a label for the 
amount of money that it was supposed to represent. We still 
hear much about it, with a good deal of confusion as to 
what is meant by a living wage. The trend of events since 
the war has put the employer in the position of clinging to 
the original meaning of the term, as a wage adjusted to the 
actual cost of living. But to the wage-earner himself, the 
living wage has come to mean something more definite. If 
it means anything to him the living wage means a wage on 
which he can really live—that is, a pay envelop that will per- 
mit him to do a little more than merely meet the day-to-day 
cost of his necessities, and enjoy something of life in addition. 
To my mind one of the significant developments of human 
society since the war is this frame of mind on the part of 
the worker. In his view living has become something above 
meeting the bare necessities of life. In his thoughts the 
merely living wage, in its original meaning, is something 
1 “The Saving and Earning Wage,” by James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor.