ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 12%

all groups whose earnings were below the rates of pay
shown by budgetary studies to be necessary for the maintenance
 of an average wage-earner’s family on the level
of health and decency. Later, when all classes of employees
 became involved in the effort to resist wage-reductions,
 a concerted attempt was made to have the Railroad
Labor Board recognize a minimum standard of “health
and modest comfort” for the lowest grades, such as the
maintenance-of-way employees, and corresponding changes
in differentials in rates of pay above this minimum for
occupations requiring skill, hazards and responsibilities.
Expressed concretely, the attitude of the employees, as
submitted to the Board, may be comprehensively illustrated
by the following statement by their economist in one of
the final hearings of the series of controversies of the
period 1921-1922:

From the time of the first hearings before this Board in
the Spring of 1920 up to the present day, the representatives
of the employees, consistently and without variation, have
urged the Board in making general wage adjustments to
adopt the following course or procedure:
First: To fix for the unskilled laborer, or the lowestpaid
 worker in the scale of railroad occupations,
a “living wage,” or a wage sufficient to support
a standard of living based on health, decency, and
a reasonable and modest degree of comfort, and
Above this basic, living wage, to establish differentials
 for the higher grades of railroad workers,
 such differentials to extend upward according
 to skill, hazard, responsibility, experience,
training and productive efficiency.

Second:

1 These proceedings involved all classes of transportation employees, numsering
 at that time about 2,500,000. See “Proceedings before the United
States Railroad Labor Board,” Chicago, 1921-1922. The records of the Labor
Board are now at the U. S. Board of Mediation and Conciliation, Washinglon.