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 dan- 
gerous 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 compensa- 
tion 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 re- 
quirements 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.