154 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
received a wide public acceptance, but also has gained the 
unqualified approval of forward-looking industrial man- 
agers. It has also been gradually receiving formal sanc- 
tions in the practical adjustment of wages by arbitration 
boards and other public agencies. 
Tue BupGeTary METHOD ACCEPTED 
Within recent years the opposition to the budgetary 
method for measuring the adequateness of wage standards 
has also largely disappeared. There is still criticism of 
the standards, or of the items going to make up a par- 
ticular standard, as well as pertinent discussion as to the 
accuracy and widespread applicability of budgetary stand- 
ards; but the consensus of the best economic opinion as 
well as the most authoritative official practise now is that 
the only sound basis for a wage determination on a stand- 
ard of adequateness is a study of necessary family expen- 
ditures, and the working out of a wage rate sufficient to 
meet these expenditures within a reasonable number of 
hours of work each day or each week. 
This budgetary method has been made necessary by the 
fact that American industry—because of conditions which 
have existed, with some notable exceptions—has not paid 
its unskilled workers an amount sufficient to maintain 
themselves and their families in health and decency. The 
low-grade industrial workers, indeed, have always been the 
residual sufferers in industry. They have been difficult 
to organize into unions, their bargaining power has been 
weak, and they have suffered not only from the exploita- 
tion of employers but also from the gains of more strongly 
organized wage-earners. 
In attempting, therefore, to determine what adequate 
wages should be, few standards can be found in industry 
as it now exists. This has made necessary the budgetary