54 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
been too low. It was also declared that old wage theories 
should be abandoned, and a new industrial code should 
be sanctioned which should set forth more equitable, 
humane, and democratic principles for determining wages 
and industrial relations. They also wished to substitute 
for pre-war industrial conflict, a system for the judicial 
settlement of wage disputes with these new principles as 
a guide. This attitude was nowhere better expressed than 
in the statement issued shortly after the Armistice by the 
National Catholic War Council in Washington, Its rec- 
ommendation for post-war reconstruction was, in part, 
as follows: 
The general level of wages attained during the war should 
not be lowered. In a few industries, especially some directly 
and peculiarly connected with the carrying on of war, wages 
have reached a plane upon which they can not possibly con- 
tinue for this grade of occupations. But the number of 
workers in this situation is an extremely small proportion 
of the entire wage-earning population. The overwhelming 
majority should not be compelled or suffered to undergo any 
reduction in their rates of remuneration, for two reasons. 
First, because the average rate of pay has not increased faster 
than the cost of living; second, because a considerable major- 
ity of the wage-earners of the United States, both men and 
women, were not receiving living wages when prices began 
to rise in 1915. . . . Therefore, wages on the whole should 
not be reduced even when the cost of living recedes from its 
present high level. 
Even if the great majority of workers were now in receipt 
of more than living wages, there are no good reasons why 
rates of pay should be lowered. After all, a living wage is 
not necessarily the full measure of justice. All the Catholic 
authorities on the subject explicitly declare that this is only 
the minimum of justice. In a country as rich as ours, there 
are very few cases in which it is possible to prove that the