was the wife of the "boarding boss" getting dinner-some sort of hot apple cake and a stew of the cheapest cuts of meats. Along one side of the room was an oilcloth-covered table with a plank bench on each side; above it a rack holding a long row of handleless white cups and a shelf with tin knives and forks. Near the up-to-date range, the only piece of real furniture in the room, hung the "buckets" in which all mill men carry their noon or midnight meals. In the room above, double iron bedsteads were set close together and on them comfortables were neatly laid. In these two rooms, beside the "boarding boss," a stalwart Bulgarian, his wife, and two babies, lived 20 men.

The "boarding boss" runs the house and the men pay $3.00 a month for a place to sleep, for having their clothes washed, and their food cooked. In addition, an account is kept of the food purchased and the total is divided among the men on pay day. The housewife also purchases and cooks any special food a man orders; beef, pork, lamb, each with a tag of some sort labeling the order, will all be fried together. A separate statement for each boarder is kept of these expenses.

Such an account for a group of men in a small Slavic household may prove of interest. The family, consisting of a man, his wife, his brother, three children, and four boarders occupied a house of four rooms, for which they paid a rent of $14.00. The man earned only $10.80 a week with which to meet the needs of a growing family. One-half the cost of the food was paid by the boarders, including the brother, and amounted for each man to about $1.06 a week. The expenditures for the week were: vegetables, $1.06; fruit, $0.56; milk, eggs, etc., $1.98; sugar, $0.49; sundries, $0.76; and meat, $5.78, making a total of $10.63. Beef, pork, veal, eggs, milk, cheese, and fruit were ordered as "extras" by the five boarders in varying proportions. Upon these each spent from $3.00 to $4.00.

The average expense for each man including his share of the general sum, together with the amount spent individually, was about $8.02 a month. Adding $3.00 a month for room and washing, the total expense to each was about $11.00 a month. In prosperous times these men make from $9.90 to $12.00 a week. It is obvious, therefore, that if the fixed expenditure of these single men is less than $3.00 a week, a large margin remains over and above clothes for saving or indulgence. They can thus send for wife and children, fulfil their duties to aged parents, live high according to their lights, or make provision for their own future.

But nearly half of the men employed in the mill have families to support, usually on the same wage. How does the other half

live? Let us take the average expenditure of ten Slavic budget families without boarders, earning less than $12.00 a week, whose total average expenditure was $10.03 a week, 13 cents above the usual day laborer's regular wage of $9.90. The figures are as follows: Food, $4.68; rent, $1.62; fuel, $0.27; clothing, $1.57; other housekeeping expenses, $0.13; tobacco, $0.07; liquor, $0.55; insurance, $0.77; other expenses, $0.41.

This distribution of expenses is fairly representative of the amount of money the Slavs can count on unless they work overtime or take in lodgers. The $1.62 a week for rent provides only for a one- or two-room tenement, two rooms in one of the undesirable houses costing $8.00 a month. With an average expenditure in this group of $4.64 a week, the cost of food for the average family would equal 20 cents a day per grown man, 2 cents a day less than the estimate for essentials.

To show the food value of their provisions, we must rely upon the statement of the average expenditure of one family, including man, his wife, and three children, twelve, three and nine months. old. The family was dependent on the man's earnings of $9.90 a week. The food expenditures for a week were: bread, $0.75; baker's food, $0.03; meat, $1.46; flour, $0.26; potatoes, $0.25; other vegetables, $0.09; dried beans, $0.06; eggs, $0.24; milk, $0.11; butter, $0.38; cheese, $0.05; fresh fruit, $0.13; sugar, $0.14; tea, $0.08; coffee, $0.76; and sundries, $0.40. The total is $5.19, making an average of $0.74 a day. This is $0.23 a day on a grown-man-unit basis.

The nutritive value of the food was probably a little below the requisite amount. In all probability these Slavic women are not skillful buyers-the accounts consist of a rather monotonous iteration of "bread, meat-bread, meat" that does not promise an inspiring diet. The expenditure for clothing among the ten families was below what is estimated as essential. No money was expended for furniture; a fact borne out by the utter bareness of the tworoom houses of many of the laborers. With the exception of insurance and comparatively high expenditure for liquor, these figures indicate that life measured in terms of possessions is at a low ebb among the Slavic laborers. And what has become of the margin which was to make possible the attainment of that old-country ambition, a bit of property and a bank account? Some other means must be found to achieve these ends.

That device is to take in lodgers. The income from this source is no mean item. Of 102 families investigated, three-quarters received from lodgers a sum at least equal to the rent, while at

fifth received twice the amount of the rent or more. A glance at the sources of incomes of the families suggests that among the Slavs themselves the wages of an unskilled laborer are considered insufficient to support a family, even according to very low standards.

274. A "Fair Living Wage"22

BY LOUISE BOLAND MORE

What, then, is a "fair living wage" for an average family? The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics puts it at $724 a year for a family of five; the New York Bureau of Labor at $520; Mr. John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers of America, at $600; Mr. Robert Hunter, author of "Poverty," says $460 (for actual and necessary expenses); and Dr. Edward T. Devine, Secretary of the Charity Organization of New York City, estimates $600 as a minimum. These estimates were all made at periods of lower prices and cost of living than the present (1906).

A "fair living wage" should be large enough not only to cover expenses which Mr. Rowntree calls "necessary for maintaining merely physical efficiency," but it should allow for some recreation and a few pleasures, for sickness, short periods of unemployment, and some provision for the future in the form of savings, insurance, or membership in benefit societies.

The whole question of a fair wage depends primarily on the amount and cost of food necessary for proper nutrition. If a man is underfed, he must underwork, as Mr. Rowntree says; his children are stunted in growth and intellect, and when a man is unfit for work he fails to get it or works for the lowest wages. Mr. Rowntree adds: "The most hopeless condition of the poor, as every social worker knows, is unfitness for work. Unfitness for work means low wages, low wages means insufficient food, insufficient food means unfitness for labor, and so the vicious circle is complete."

This investigation has shown that a well-nourished family of five in a city neighborhood needed at least $6 a week for food. The average for 39 families, having five in the family, was $327.24 a year for food. If we consider $6 a week (or $312 a year) as 43.4 per cent of the total expenditure (which was the average percentage expended for food in these 200 families, and very near the average for the workingmen's families in the extensive investigation of the Department of Labor), the total expenditure would be about $720 a year. It therefore seems a conservative conclusion to draw from this study that a "fair living wage" for a workingman's family of average size in New York City should be "Adapted from Wage-Earners' Budgets, 268-270. Copyright by Henry. Holt & Co. (1907).

at least $728 a year, or a steady income of $14 a week. Making allowance for a larger proportion of surplus than was found in these families, which is necessary to provide adequately for the future, the income should be somewhat larger than this, this is, from $800 to $900 a year.

F. THE MINIMUM WAGE

275. The Promise of a Minimum Wage23

BY A. N. HOLCOMBE

The immediate direct effect of the establishment of a minimum standard-of-living wage would be to put an end to the employment of normal adult workers at lower rates. Not every wageworker who has been employed at lower rates would necessarily be deprived of employment, nor would the wage of every such wage-earner necessarily be increased to the standard minimum rate. Some employees would receive the increase, and some would lose their employment. The actual effect would depend partly upon the efficiency of the wage-earners concerned, and partly upon the character of the demand for their services. In industries like department stores and steam laundries, which serve local markets and are free from outside competition, probably the increase of wages could be paid to all employees below the minimum without so increasing the cost of production as to produce a material decline in the demand. But in industries serving a wider market and subject to outside competition, such as cotton mills and shoe factories, the establishment of a legal minimum wage might reduce employment rather than increase wages. The outcome would depend largely upon the extent of the necessary increase and the rapidity with which it should be put in force. Some sweated industries might be altogether incapable of maintaining themselves. But such as these the country would be better without.

The greatest difficulty arises in the cases where work-people of distinctly different standards of living come into competition with one another. Unless the groups are of equal efficiency, the attempt to establish a single standard for all might result in securing the industry to the most efficient group and excluding the others from all employment therein. To attempt to establish an American standard-of-living wage for alien races of distinctly lower standards and lower efficiency would probably result in the exclusion of many aliens from employment in the country. It would also result in the exclusion of most of the negroes from the occupations in which the

23 Adapted from an article in the American Economic Review, II, 33-37. Copyright (1912).

wage should be adjusted to the efficiency of the native whites. A legal minimum wage would probably be of advantage in promoting a better distribution of such immigrants among our various industries.

The indirect economic effects of the establishment of a minimum standard-of-living wage may be mentioned summarily.

First, the establishment by legislation of such a wage would make available to the poorest and most helpless of the laboring population a share in the advantages obtained by the better-to-do and stronger through voluntary association. An advantage would be the greater security for the protection of the interests of the public against the abuse of irresponsible power in the interests of special classes.

Secondly, the line would be more sharply drawn between the unemployable and the merely unemployed. It would also tend to restrict the influx of the unemployable from abroad, thus at once checking the increase of inferior labor and raising the average efficiency of the domestic supply.

Thirdly, there would result a restriction of the field of competition between workpeople. The wage-earner whose chief recommendation is his willingness to work for a pittance would lose the advantage of his submissiveness, and skill and strength would become of greater importance in obtaining employment.

Fourthly, there would result a restriction of the field of competition between employers. The employer. whose chief stock in trade is his shrewdness in driving hard bargains would lose his advantage. The peculiar qualities of the best type of business men would be of greater importance in the achievement of success.

276. The Case for Wage-Boards24

BY CONSTANCE SMITH

Many of the objections ordinarily advanced against Wages Boards, or, indeed, against any proposal to regulate wages, are little more than a re-statement of the arguments employed to defeat the passing of the earlier Factory Acts. They rely for support on the principle, more or less disguised, of laissez faire. But there are some, more strictly addressed to the practical proposal now before the country, to which it seems desirable to give such brief consideration as space permits.

Adapted from The Case for Wages Boards, 75-86. Published by the National Anti-Sweating League, London (1911).