148 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES
We quite agree with counsel for the men that there exists
no reason for applying here the standards of either the
“Poverty Level” or the “Minimum of Subsistence Level”;
, « . we think the standard to be aimed at here is, at least,
the “Minimum of Health and Comfort Level” and by pref-
erence, what he describes as the “Level of the American
Standard of Living.”
In another Massachusetts street railway arbitration in
1921, the question of supply and demand came before the
Board, and the Chairman, Mr. Thomas H. Mahoney,
decided that the law of supply and demand could not be
utilized to depress wages below a living wage. He said :*
However that may be, it seems to us that the doctrine of
the living wage, so called, has become firmly established in
America. In other words, the swing of wages downwards in
accordance with the law of supply and demand is arrested
arbitrarily at a point which constitutes what is called a living
wage.
In 1924, another street railway arbitration board in
Worcester, Massachusetts, made the following declaration
in its award :2
The Board believes that it is impossible to fix a wage rate
by mathematical statistics. Bare cost-of-living statistics are
important, yet American progress and stability demand that
we consider also American standards of living. Increased
efficiency and production, universal and advanced education,
new inventions, the war, a disposition to treat labor with
more liberality and, maybe, a little socialism have all com-
bined to create an American standard of living above the
1 Award in case of Massachusetts Northeastern Street Railway, 1921;
quoted from Brief in Behalf of Employees, Arbitration between the United
Electric Railways Company and Providence Division Number, 618 of the
Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of
America; May, 1925; p. 30.
2 Award in Arbitration, between Worcester Consolidated Street Railway
Company, et al., and Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway
Employees of America and Local Divisions No. 22 and 448 thereof, Avril 25,
1924, Springfield, Massachusetts; page 17.
