ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 97 
The High Contracting Parties, recognising that the well- 
being, physical, moral, and intellectual, of industrial wage- 
earners is of supreme international importance, have framed, 
in order to further this great end, the permanent machinery 
provided for in Section 1, and associated with that of the 
League of Nations. . . . 
Among these methods and principles, the following seem 
‘0 the High Contracting Parties to be of special and urgent 
importance: . . . 
Third. The payment to the employed of a wage adequate 
to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is under- 
stood in their time and country. 
LETTER OF PRESIDENT WILSON TO RAILROAD WORKERS, 1920 
In a letter of February 13, 1920, to the Representatives 
of the Railroad Labor Organizations in the matter of 
referring the then pending wage demands of the latter to 
the newly-created Railroad Labor Board, President Wilson 
promised that the “living wage” principle, among other 
factors, would be considered in adjusting rates of pay. 
He said: 
3. I shall at once constitute a committee of experts to take 
the data already available in the various records of the 
United States Railroad Administration, including the rec- 
ords of the Lane Commission and of the Board of Rail- 
road Wages and Working Conditions, and to analyze the 
same so as to develop in the shortest possible time the facts 
bearing upon a just and reasonable basis of wages for the 
various classes of railroad employees with due regard to all 
factors reasonably bearing upon the problem and specifically 
to the factors of the average of wages paid for similar or 
analogous labor for other industries in this country, the cost 
of living and a fair living wage, so as to get the problems 
in shape for the earliest possible final disposition.