ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 97

The High Contracting Parties, recognising that the wellbeing,
 physical, moral, and intellectual, of industrial wageearners
 is of supreme international importance, have framed,
in order to further this great end, the permanent machinery
provided for in Section 1, and associated with that of the
League of Nations. . . .
Among these methods and principles, the following seem
‘0 the High Contracting Parties to be of special and urgent
importance: . . .
Third. The payment to the employed of a wage adequate
to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood
 in their time and country.

LETTER OF PRESIDENT WILSON TO RAILROAD WORKERS, 1920
In a letter of February 13, 1920, to the Representatives
of the Railroad Labor Organizations in the matter of
referring the then pending wage demands of the latter to
the newly-created Railroad Labor Board, President Wilson
promised that the “living wage” principle, among other
factors, would be considered in adjusting rates of pay.
He said:

3. I shall at once constitute a committee of experts to take
the data already available in the various records of the
United States Railroad Administration, including the records
 of the Lane Commission and of the Board of Railroad
 Wages and Working Conditions, and to analyze the
same so as to develop in the shortest possible time the facts
bearing upon a just and reasonable basis of wages for the
various classes of railroad employees with due regard to all
factors reasonably bearing upon the problem and specifically
to the factors of the average of wages paid for similar or
analogous labor for other industries in this country, the cost
of living and a fair living wage, so as to get the problems
in shape for the earliest possible final disposition.