ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 12% 
that the Board would recognize the need of a basic living 
wage for the unskilled worker in the transportation industry, 
and would revise and reconstruct the entire wage scale for 
the railroads on this basis. Several months before the Board 
was organized, the Bituminous Coal Commission had not 
hesitated to adopt such a policy. It repudiated the cost-of- 
living theory of wage adjustments, accepted the living wage 
as the basis of readjusting wages in the soft-coal industry, 
and increased the wages of unskilled workers in and around 
the mines 97 per cent., altho the mine workers themselves 
only claimed that the cost of living had advanced 85 per cent. 
This was done in March, 1920, or about two months before 
this Board began its deliberations. 
On the other hand, when at the close of 1920 the tide of 
business and industrial activity turned—when expansion was 
succeeded by rapid and sudden contraction and by the falling 
off in railway traffic and income—and when in the early 
months of 1921 the railroad representatives, taking advantage 
of a slight decline in prices and especially of oversupply of 
labor because of unemployment, and especially a surplus of 
unskilled labor, asked the Board to reduce the rates of pay 
of all classes of railway employees, we relied upon the prin- 
ciple of the living wage for the unskilled worker as a “saving 
clause,” to resist the attacks of the railroads based on their 
conception of labor as a commodity whose price should be 
determined by the law of supply and demand. 
We contended at that time that the Board before giving 
ear to other considerations should determine whether or not 
the rates of pay of unskilled workers were sufficient to main- 
tain a life of decency and health. This consideration was 
urged as paramount to all others, in our opinion, and until 
the principle of a living wage for unskilled workers was met, 
other reasons for wage reductions based on declining prices 
or cost of living or lower wages in other industries, we 
claimed, could not be equitably entertained by the Board. 
Our conception of the status of the Board was, at that 
time, as it always has been, that it is a court of industrial