Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/331

Rh advance in the technical arts. At many points we are seeking to standardize the conditions of welfare of human beings. Naturally we are here concerned with a minimum standard; if we can discover and fix this measure, the more capable, aspiring, and energetic members of society may safely be left free to enjoy all above that level which they can justly acquire and rationally use.

At this hour no rational (scientific) standard for the minimum income of wage-earners has been generally accepted, (I) The rough rule of average employers is "the law of supply and demand;" which law actually leads to the destruction of human life on a gigantic scale for the sake of profits. It has no final social justification. (2) The gradation of wages according to the rate of profits is not rational or equitable. The fluctuations and inequalities under such a rule would be unendurable. (3) The rule of the "sliding scale," which means that the rate of wages fluctuates with the price of the commodity produced, has no ultimate basis in reason, and does not provide a socially acceptable minimum rate. (4) The rule of the strongest, in the fight between trade unions and employers' combinations, which gives the advantage to the party which holds out longest, is simply a barbarous makeshift, with a rational standard far in the dim background. And where unions and combinations do agree the result is simply more hardship for the consumers, and bears with greatest weight on the very poor. (5) The only rational starting-point is a minimum standard below which public morality expressed in sentiment, custom, trade-union regulations, moral maxims, and law will not permit workers to be employed for wages.

As I have elsewhere discussed this minimum in relation to the Industrial Group, it remains only to indicate the contribution which charity work has made to the discussion of a standard. The dietaries of asylums, orphanages, hospitals, and prisons are the outcome of a long series of experiments in chemical and physiological laboratories, in army and navy, in camp and mine, as well as in these institutions of charity and correction.