96 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
us to see things as they really are,” and in the light of this 
clearer vision, people came “to regard many conditions as 
intolerable which before had only seemed as inevitable.” 
This was especially true of the condition in which unskilled 
wage earners in manufacturing, mining, and transporta- 
tion were living before the war. In any true sense, their 
wages could not be construed as “living wages” even after 
the attempt had been made during the war period to adjust 
them to rising costs of living. After the cessation of the 
conflict, enlightened public opinion, therefore, refused to 
acquiesce in this state of things. Its attitude had been 
fundamentally changed by the war. Pre-war notions as 
to wage standards and principles were no longer accepted. 
Within a year after the Armistice, church organizations 
without regard to denomination, statesmen, economists, 
publicists, national industrial conferences, arbitration 
boards and other public agencies having to do with wage 
adjustments and standards, unreservedly sanctioned the 
living-wage principle. Typical declarations from repre- 
sentative groups are given below as an indication of the 
widespread acceptance of the principle of the living wage 
during recent years.? 
LABOR PROVISIONS OF THE TREATY OF PEACE 
Practically a universal sanction to the living-wage prin- 
ciple by the leading commercial and industrial nations of 
the world was contained in the Labor Provisions of the 
Treaty of Peace in 1919. This pronouncement was in 
part as follows :? 
: ra Fe Human Needs of Labor,” B. Seebchm Rowntree; London, 1918, pp. 
2 For numerous citations for the period immediately following the war, see 
“The Sanction for a Living Wage: Employees’ Exhibit of the United Mine 
Workers Before the U. S. Anthracite Coal Commission,” Washington, 1920. 
3 Treaty of Peace with Germany, 1919, Sec. II, Article 427.