environment.

Many of them, of course, are not truly involuntary victims, but there is that in their makeup and in the breeding they have had that causes them to sink rather than dash themselves again and again against the harsh line-up of forces which life has presented to them.

I do not believe that anyone can study at first hand conditions as they exist today, and by these I mean the every-day facts of life as they affect the economic condition of mankind, and not thrill with the zeal of the proselyte in the cause of a better day. I believe that you can't reach a man's soul, any more than his heart, except through his stomach. It is positively shameful to hurl a "Thou shall not steal" at a hungry or ragged human being.

Let us all dress and have dinner before we talk of morals.

An element in life that has far-reaching consequences is that we are apt to live merely by comparison. We take as a matter of course the crowded East Sides, the Hell's Half Acres, and the other strikingly named districts in our big cities. We don't seek out reasons nor hunt for solvents. We see them from the time we are able to toddle until we die, without a proper emotion nor a sense— a gripping vital sense-that something is wrong. We regard them with the fearful complacency with which black death, diphtheria, smallpox and other dangerous diseases were regarded in by-gone days, as something inevitable and in accord with life.

The East Sides and the Hell's Half Acres are the foulest blots on civilization. They advertise that injustices and menaces to the health and well-being of communities are tolerated for the sake of profit. They show that property is in the saddle riding down human life. They prove that the tenants, giving up their lives in toil, cannot earn enough to be decently housed. And we stand for the sort of living they must have and the kind of wages they must take.

Shorter Course Charted

In placing economic conditions before moral questions, I do not intend to belittle the wonderful work that has been done in the world to help the unfortunate and to place obstacles in the way of those who would profit through the prostitution of men and women by trafficking in their frailties. It is to the glory of our race that thousands of men and women have gone out of their way to take part in this task, as arduous and thankless as any person

could essay. I am merely trying to point out that it is my belief that their objective is in much easier reach. I am trying to chart for them what I believe to be a shorter course to their haven. We know, as rational beings, that human misery, so universal as that caused by poor wages and viciously sinful hours of toil, is infinitely worse than the result of any individual's moral lapse or folly, degrading and vile though it may make the victim appear.

Napoleon said that an army marched on its stomach. He meant that it was only good for severe taxing of its strength as long as its larder was filled. He might have said it with equal truth of the entire race of men. The poorly nourished are weak comrades in a war on rotten industrial conditions, adulterated foods, vice, wholesale murder, or any other of those countless evils that have an economic basis.

Does this sound pessimistic? I hope not, for I am optimism incarnated. I believe the world is getting better every day. I believe more and more every day that a greater number of persons are becoming genuinely interested in the well-being of humanity than ever before, some from personal reasons, but more from that divine fire which a pure and undefiled love for even the lowliest of us inspires.

Some one has said there is more of the Christ spirit in the world today than ever before. The very aims that the honest battlers for the right under their different flags aspire to show that there is a mighty undercurrent-a soul movement, if you will have it that way that is making for better things.

Let us fight for all the good we may achieve-whether religious, economic, social, moral; but I believe that every sincere soul should line up with every other sincere soul in a fight to a finish to lift from the world the weight of agony caused by insufferable conditions resulting from low wages, the crux of bad economics.

THE ADEQUACY OF AMERICAN WAGES

BY SCOTT NEARING, PH.D.,

Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania.

I. The Measure of Wage Adequacy

The adequacy of American wages, like any other question in social science, should be discussed in spirit of honest truth-seeking. Everywhere the problem is leading to endless and often to bitter controversy between employers and wage-earners, who ordinarily base their contention that wages are "too high" or "too low" upon tradition or prejudice rather than upon scientific analysis. The result is dissention and misunderstanding. The student of economics approaches the matter scientifically. First, he studies the wage facts; second, he decides upon some standard by which wage adequacy may be measured or judged; and third, he compares the prevailing wages with this standard in order to determine their adequacy.

The present study is based on three propositions which are fundamental to any consideration of wages:

1. Industry must pay a wage sufficient to maintain the efficiency of its workers.

2. Society must oppose any wage that leads to poverty, hardship or social

dependence.

3. Wages must be sufficient to enable the worker and his family to live like self-respecting members of the community.

These three statements are so generally accepted that they require little elaboration. It seems evident that unless industry pays a wage that will maintain the efficiency of its workers, industry must deteriorate. It seems equally evident that unless society insists on a wage sufficient to prevent dependence, the family, the school, and the state must suffer. At the same time, if progress is to be made, the wages paid must make possible self-respect, while they stimulate men to activity. All three propositions are stated in terms of social expediency. The social justice of the present wage system will not be called into question.

Under the present social system, a man's wage must be a family

wage. The home is looked upon as the basic social institution. Each man is expected to make a home, and having made it, to earn a living sufficient to allow the wife to devote her time and energy to the care of the home and of the children. While the mother presides over the home, the father must receive a wage sufficient to keep his family on a basis of physical health and social decency. The family most frequently used in recent social studies consists of a man, wife, and three children under 14 years of age. Such a family corresponds in size with the average American family, the children are too young to work for wages, and their mother should be in the home and not at work in the factory. This family is sometimes called the "normal" or "type" family.

No single wage will provide health and decency for all families. Some women cannot keep a home on $40 a week that others can keep on $20. The ability and personality of the housekeeper are large factors in making both ends meet. However there is a minimum income below which the average woman cannot provide health and decency for those dependent upon her housekeeping.

II. What is the American Wage?

A discussion of wage adequacy begins, of necessity, with an analysis of wages. What is the American wage?

The manifest shortcomings of an "average" as a means of describing wages have led statisticians to the use of classified wages. Instead of saying that the wages of 1,000 men average $2.63, the statistician notes that of the 1,000 men, 28 receive a wage of from $1.00 to $1.49; that 324 receive a wage of from $1.50 to $1.99; and

1 The extent to which the various sources contributed to family income in a group of 25,440 families is shown in the following table:

From Cost of Living and Retail Prices of Food, Commissioner of Labor, 1903,

p. 51, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1904.

so on. By this means, a group picture is made of the amount received by all of the wage-earners.

There are a number of rather complete summaries of the wages paid in certain American industries-chiefly manufacturing.2 A brief statement of some of the more important classified wage figures appears in the following table:

THE WAGE RATES OF ADULT MALES EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

The manufacturing industries of the north and east pay to the adult male wage-earners wage rates of less than $750 in seventenths of the cases, and of less than $1,000 in nine-tenths of the cases. With the exception of California, the percentage of men receiving

2 The meager wage figures covering transportation, municipal utilities, mercantile establishments and mines indicate that the wages paid in the manufacturing industries are fairly typical of wages paid by other industries in the same locality requiring a like amount of ability or training. See Income, Scott Nearing, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1915, Chapter 4.

3 Compiled from the Reports of the State Bureau of Labor.

Census of Manufactures, 1905, Bulletin 93, Earnings of Wage-earners, Washington, 1908, p. 11.

Report on the Condition of Employment in the Iron and Steel Industry, Senate Document 110, 62d Congress, 1st Session, Volume I, p. xxvi.

• Compiled from the Reports of the Tariff Board, from the Report by the Federal Department of Labor on the Strike at Lawrence, 1912, and from the state reports.