ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 121
demands, will somehow reach a balance between them as to
what in the long run constitutes a general saving wage,
This is no new thing. For some time the most forward-
looking of our employers have been paying the saving wage
as a matter of course, perhaps without knowing it. My con-
tention is that what these enlightened employers have been
doing must become general. Sooner or later all the rest will
have to catch up to them. I believe public opinion will com-
pel it. Without our knowing it, great social changes have
been working themselves out among us, and prominent in this
evolution is the worker’s demand for his share in the larger
benefits of this new day. He is no longer a mere worker at
a bench, an automaton. His intelligence has been expanded
by new and rapid experiences. His tastes have been height-
ened along with the increase in his intelligence. He too has
risen to the enjoyment of books, of pictures, music, the
theater, a chance at the higher edueation, to cite but a few
of his new demands. In other words, the newly enlightened
workingman has risen to a new place as a human being and
as a member of our rich community. Conscious of having
taken that place, he is now entitled to insist upon enjoying
all the advantages of it. Nor should we object to this, for
it means the permanent enrichment of us all, in that the
advancement of human society is always to be measured by
the advancement of the worker himself.
The desirability of adding to the living wage standard,
as generally advocated, an allowance for reasonable sav-
ings, has been generally realized and accepted. In the
earlier living-wage movement, the need for savings had
been recognized, but the point had not been stressed
because in its practical aspects it was felt that emphasis
should first be placed upon the necessity of raising the
lower family incomes to the point where they would afford
at least a healthy and decent standard of living, and after
this had been done the question of provision for savings
