ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 101

prise whenever it has become clear that free contact fails to
insure conditions of employment compatible with the social
interest. In this manner, the length of the working day, the
employment of women and children, the safeguarding of dangerous
 processes, have heretofore been defined as to least
favorable terms by legal enactment. The motive of such
legislation has been to replace, by exercise of the state’s
police power, that minimum well-being which the wage-earner
cannot secure for himself and which it is essential for the
safeguarding of society, that he should enjoy. The same
intervention is now invoked to establish as a minimum wage
—for less than which it shall not be lawful for employers to
contract or laborers to engage—an amount not less than the
necessary cost of maintaining the worker’s family in health
and decency.?

DR. J. NOBLE STOCKETT, JR., UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

The two fundamental principles which may fairly govern
the wage determinations of arbitrators are the grant of a
living wage to unskilled labor, and the maintenance of the
standard of living of all employees. The first of these is the
more important, since, with the upper grades of labor, there
is no question of their securing enough to insure a decent
standard of living. . ..
There is practical agreement nowadays among students of
social conditions that no employee should receive compensation
 below an amount sufficient to secure a normal standard
of living. The opinion is current that since the result of the
wage contract is dependent upon the relative strength of the
two parties, and since the employees are usually the weaker,
:mployers should be limited in the exercise of their superior
power by a provision that every wage must fulfil the requirements
 of a living wage. It is unnecessary to treat
here of the reasons for the payment of a living wage. The

1 “Abolition of Poverty,” Jacob H, Hollander. Houghton Mifflin Company,
1919, pp. 68-69.