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There is a definite minimum of food, clothing, shelter and other necessaries of life below which physical health and social decency are impossible. That minimum is fixed by the demands of nature and by the standards of society wholly independent of price; therefore, any discussion of the cost of a decent living begins with an analysis of the various items which comprise living decency.

The recent discussions of the wages of women, the relation to prostitution, and the whole range of economic and social problems that result from the entrance of women into industries outside of the home have led inevitably to a consideration of the wages of women. Industries employ single women who must be self-supporting. Do they pay wages that will permit of self-support in terms of health and efficiency?

Some of the most interesting studies of the subject have been made by the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission. Mrs. Glendower Evans, a member of the Commission, tells of the dramatic events surrounding one of the earliest investigations.

The Commission had investigated wages in one of the smaller Massachusetts industries employing a large proportion of women. Then the Commission considered, item by item, the minimum cost of decent living for a self-supporting woman living in the neighborhood of these industries. Mrs. Evans in her address at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association at Princeton, 1914, said:

"Very grave the employers looked during this phase of the discussion and their surprise was obvious when the trifling items they had agreed to, one by one, were totaled." The total was $8.71 per week. Mrs. Evans continued: "With $8.71 accepted as the minimum sum upon which the independent woman could support herself, the chairman said: 'I call the Board's attention to the fact that this figure is higher than the wages received by over 90 per cent of the women employed in this industry.' "2 Among the 180,214 women employed in the industries of Massachusetts in 1910, two-thirds were paid at a rate of less than $8.71 per week

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Similar showings are made in Philadelphia by the Consumers' League; in Baltimore, where E. B. Butler fixed a minimum at $6.70, and found 81 per cent of the department store employees receiving less than that amount; in New York City by the Factory Investigating Commission, and generally, wherever the wages of women have been studied, they seem to be, in the vast majority of instances, insufficient to pay for health and efficiency.3

The relation of the wages of women to the cost of healthful living is important. Even more significant, however, is the relation of men's wages to the cost of a healthful living for a family. During the past ten years this matter has received a great

* Proceedings, p. 273.

A summary of women's wages will be found in "Income," Scott Nearing, op. cit., Chapter 3.

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"Please, good Mr. Devil, fetch my mamma, too. It's so nice and warm in your house."

Realistically drawn, starving slum children and the company they prefer to the comforts (?) of their own home. (A cartoon by Thomas Theodor Heine from "Simplizissimus.")

deal of attention. Estimates of the cost of healthful living have been made on an elaborate scale, and the results derived in a large number of studies have been used to check each other. Perhaps the matter can be stated most definitely if the question is confined, for the moment, to one industrythat of anthracite coal-which employs 175,000 men and boys in the Pennsylvania anthracite field. The ordinary man, doing moderate physical work, requires approximately 3,500 heat units of energy per day. Unless these energy units are supplied, he must ultimately become devitalized. The anthracite workers, as a group, are doing more than "moderate physical work." However, the 3,500 unit standard will be accepted as a minimum.

An adult man requires 3,500 units of energy. An adult woman requires eight-tenths as much. For convenience, the discussion will be built around a family that includes a man, his wife, a boy of twelve, a girl of ten, a girl of seven and a boy of five. These children require respectively, seven-tenths, six-tenths, five-tenths and four-tenths as much as an adult man. The family, taken together, would, therefore, represent a consuming power equal to that of four adult men."

For summaries of these studies see "Standard of Living," F. H. Streightoff. Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1911. "Financing the WageEarner's Family," Scott Nearing. New York: B. W. Huebsch,

1913.

"A full statement of the situation will be found in "Anthracite," Scott Nearing. Winston. Co., Philadelphia, 1915, Chapter 4.

For fuller details regarding methods of estimating the dietary, see “Financing the Wage-Earner's Family," Chap. 2, Sec. 7.

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