118 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
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about greater cooperation and greater production from 
their working forces. 
Because of public policy, because it would do more than 
anything else to produce sound citizenship in our self- 
governing republic. 
THE “Savings” AND “CULTURAL” WAGE 
As the principle of a “living wage” received widespread 
sanction and acceptance, the movement was accompanied 
by a growing demand for the establishment of a still 
higher minimum standard of compensation. It was held 
that it was not sufficient to provide earnings which would 
insure only a standard of health and modest comfort for 
the unskilled wage-earner and his family, but it was 
equally important that he should have surplus earnings for 
savings in order to protect himself and his family against 
the contingencies of unemployment, sickness, disability, 
old age, and death. This gave rise to the advocacy of the 
“savings wage” as the essential minimum standard. In 
one of his public addresses in 1921, President Harding 
made a statement on this point which became a standard 
as to the significance and content of the savings-wage con- 
ception. He said :* 
In our effort at establishing industrial justice we must see 
that the wage-earner is placed in an economically sound 
position. His lowest wage must be emough for comfort, 
enough to make his house a home, enough to insure that the 
struggle for existence shall not crowd out the things truly 
worth living for. There must be provision for education, for 
recreation and a margin for savings. There must be such 
freedom of action as will insure full play to the individual's 
abilities. 
This was a highly pregnant statement. President Hard- 
ing stated his conviction that the lowest wage paid to a 
1 From public address of President Warren G. Harding, New York City, 
May 23, 1921.