102 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

evil effects upon society and upon the laborer himself arising
 from the failure to receive such a wage are patent.
Undoubtedly a living wage is a necessity; the real issue is
whether it is possible to determine the essentials constituting
a normal standard of living, and whether the amount of
money required to purchase these essentials can be calculated
within reasonably exact limits. . . . Summing up the attitude
 of American arbitration boards, it may be said that they
favor granting a living wage to the lower-paid and unskilled
employees!

PROFESSOR JOHN A. RYAN, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
OF AMERICA

To-day the doctrine that the laborer has a moral claim to
at least a decent living wage is almost universally accepted
by all intelligent and disinterested persons, while the legal
minimum wage has found its way into the statute books of
countries in three continents.?

FEDERAL JUDGE (FORMER U. S. SENATOR FROM IOWA)
WM. S. KENYON

Upon the question of a living wage Federal Judge William
 S. Kenyon, when he was in the Senate and Chairman
 of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor,
on January 25, 1922, stated:
We desire before closing to refer to the vital question of
a living wage. It may be said that a living wage is a wage
which, with due regard to time lost from unavoidable causes,
will insure the lowest paid workers an income sufficient to
maintain himself and family at a level of health and modest
comfort and with a reasonable degree to security against
death, incapacity, and the contingencies of life, it being

17. Noble Stockett, Jr., “The Arbitral Determination of Railway Wages.”
Boston: Houghton Mifilin Company, 1918, pp. 172, 67-68.
2«A Living Wage,” John A. Ryan. New York, Macmillan Company,
1920, p. IV.

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