ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY III

are very few cases in which it is possible to prove that the
worker would be getting more than that to which he has a
right if he were paid something in excess of this ethical
minimum. Why then, should we assume that this is the
normal share of almost the whole laboring population? Since
our industrial resources and instrumentalities are sufficient
to provide more than a living wage for a very large proportion
 of the workers, why should we acquiesce in a theory
which denies them this measure of the comforts of life?
Such a policy is not only of very questionable morality, but
is unsound economically. The large demand for goods which
is created and maintained by high rates of wages and high
purchasing power by the masses is the surest guarantee of
a continuous and general operation of industrial establishments.
 It is the most effective instrument of prosperity for
labor and capital alike.

From its Department of Social Action, the National
Catholic Welfare Council, in a statement of October 31st,
1922, also issued the following comment on the attitude
of the United States Railroad Labor Board toward the
living-wage principle:
The Board declares that it has always granted a living
wage, but it refuses to define what a living wage means. It
juotes then the definition given by the employee representatives,
 as follows: “A wage which will support a family
of five in health and reasonable comfort, such family being
assumed to consist of a husband and a wife and three
dependent children under sixteen years of age.” “This constitutes,”
 the Board declares, “a bit of mellifluous ‘phraseology
 well calculated to deceive the unthinking.”
In making its decision, the Railroad Labor Board has gone
counter to Catholic social teaching. The Pastoral Letter of
the American Hierarchy has a passage on the living wage
which insists upon the right of a living wage, and points out
the need of an adequate definition of the living wage and its
realization in practise through whatever means are legiti-