100 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

Above that point, there may well be a fair field for the play
of competition in determining the compensation for special
ability, for special strength or special risk (where risk is
unavoidable), but below that point the matter becomes one
of which the state, for the sake of its own preservation, must
take account.

PHILADELPHIA BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH
This bureau touched upon the subject in these words :!

Nowadays very few persons object to the principle of a
living wage. It is generally agreed that the humblest worker
is entitled to a return for his services that will enable him
to support himself and his family in decency and comfort
and give his children a fair start in the world. If we have
failed thus far to secure a living wage for all workers, it
has been due largely to differences of opinion as to the
methods to be employed and to a lack of understanding of
what constitutes a living wage rather than to disapproval of
its principle.

Tue DECLARATIONS OF ECONOMISTS, STATESMEN
AND PUBLICISTS

The following declarations on the living-wage principle
have been made by the men whose names stand above
them *

JACOB H, HOLLANDER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
TOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

. . . A sufficient wage can best be assured the laborer by
state intervention defining minimum wage conditions. This
is the assertion of no new principle. From the beginning of
modern factory legislation, the state has time and again intervened
 to establish a competitive base-line in industrial enter-1
 “Workingmen’s Standard of Living in Philadelphia,” by William C.
poyen, Suslah, Db, Davis, and Myra Thwing; Macmillan Company, New