LABORS NEW STATUS 281
Despite the fact that here in the United States the wage-
earning class as a whole is better off than any other laboring
population has ever been anywhere in the world, our indus-
trial system contains certain grave defects and presents
certain very menacing features.
First, as regards wages. No competent authority denies
that an annual income of fifteen hundred dollars a year is
necessary for the decent support of a husband and wife and
three children in any city of America, or that considerably
more than that amount is required in our largest cities.
Nor does any well informed person deny that a very large
proportion, probably a majority, of our male wage-earners
receive less than fifteen hundred dollars a year.
Some persons who are aware of these facts belittle their
.mportance with the comforting assumption that these under-
paid wage-earners are somehow made of different clay and
therefore can readily get along with less than the normal
requisites of life. Other complacent persons reflect that a
majority of these underpaid males are probably unmarried
and probably do not need a family wage.
All such persons need, first of all, to examine the pertinent
facts, They ought to inquire whether it is really true that
the underpaid workers and their families differ so greatly
from their fellows that they can live decent human lives on
less than decent wages. Such an inquiry honestly made
would produce a disquiet of conscience in any person capable
of that feeling. A similar reaction would be experienced by
any well-disposed person who considers fully the implications
of a situation through which a very large number of adult
males are compelled through lack of income to forego mar-
riage and family life indefinitely.
Previously, in November, 1927, Professor Irving Fisher
of Yale University had effectively shown that the “poorest”
group in the country, or about 65 per cent. of the popula-
tion of the United States, had not participated equitably
in our unprecedented prosperity, and that their incomes
