investigation of these small farmers and laborers in Belgium show that the average wage of one man was 16 shillings ($3.90) a week during the season. The weekly income of small farmers could not be estimated, for conditions vary so largely. The farm buildings look substantial on the whole, and the houses are usually plain but seem adequate for the small families which reside in them. Many agricultural laborers are underfed, as wages are low, but owing to the small holdings in Belgium it is not difficult for laborers to lease land on excellent terms.

4. STANDARD OF LIVING IN ISLINGTON, HACKNEY AND WHITE CHAPEL, ENGLAND, 1909-10

A report was submitted by the Chief of the Bureau of Manufactures, Department of Commerce and Labor at Washington, D. C., which deals with housing conditions, cost of living, and conditions of labor and wages, in three very important laboring districts of Islington, Hackney and White Chapel, with figures for Sheffield and Salford, in the year 1909–10.22

The schedules below were not taken from stores in expensive residential districts, but were procured from the cheaper grade shops in the poorer sections.23

Some seventy-five families were visited and it was learned that

22 See Special Agent Series No. 38, edited by Henry Studniczka, 1910, Washington, D. C.

a family of four, consisting of man, wife and two small children, could sustain themselves per week, on the menu shown in the notes, at a cost of 15s 3d a week, which amounts to $3.71. The cost of rental must be included, which amounts to not less than 2s ($.49) a week per room. These families in the poorer sections rent from one to three rooms, depending upon the size of the family. A three-room flat rents for from 8s to 10s ($1.95-$2.43).

There is naturally great diversity in earning capacity of men in different trades and occupations, but the following notes give the wages in a few of the different industries.24

Eleven families from the dock labor and engineering districts were visited in the vicinity of Salford, with its trading facilities, and of Manchester, the centre of the co-operative movement, which in itself indicates that there organized labor is a strong factor in the determination of standards of living. Each family consisted of a man, wife and one or two small children. The weekly wage of the dock laborers was $4.86, while that of the mechanic was

$9.75. The average menu for one week of each family is shown in the foot notes.25

Working men, such as carpenters, stone masons and brick layers, fare better than workers from the unskilled ranks. These lowergrade workmen usually live in four-roomed houses in Sheffield, for example, and pay rental of from 6s to 8s ($1.46-$1.95). The more skilled laborers earn £1 10s ($7.30) a week, but even at that rate their food seldom reaches a higher figure than 12s ($2.82) a week.

INFLUENCE OF STANDARDS OF LIVING ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Society has, during all the centuries, enacted laws for the protection of man's property rights, and a great framework of legislation has been placed upon the statute books of all countries as concrete evidence of man's material prosperity.

During recent years there is perceptible a tendency toward the protection of man's human rights by social legislation, such as child labor and minimum wage laws, legislation regulating the number of working hours and factory inspection measures, as well as employers' liability laws. This trend of social legislation has developed out of the destruction of personal health, vitality and happiness by a low and devastating standard of living. The cause of previous inattention is very easy to discover. Human life

25 See Special Agent Series No. 38, 1910-11, p. 35:

CASH OUTLAY FOR ONE WEEK'S LIVING OF EACH OF THESE ELEVEN FAMILIES

has been held in very low regard and has been considered very cheap by society.

It is axiomatic that laws cannot be enacted fixing a living wage for men and women of average earning capacity unless there is a thorough investigation and knowledge of the essential factors of an adequate standard of living.

Economists suggest that a protection of human rights is furthered by the development of the well being of the individual and through his growth the betterment of society.

The humble wants of the worker and the return for his services in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been increased and enlarged during modern times, owing to causes of natural growth and gradual trade expansion, although according to Petty, a wage-earner in Ireland in 1672 had an annual surplus of $151.85, computed in terms of the purchasing power of the dollar in the pre-World War period. However, King demonstrates that an annual deficit was the lot of the wage laborer in England at that time. His figures are borne out by Hale, and later by Eden, who investigated the condition of the wage-earner in England of a hundred years later.

Statistics indicate that now, as then, a minimum allowance for the necessities of life, as established by scientific investigators, greatly exceeds the amount of money actually being earned by wage laborers.

Chapin, writing of 1907-8 in New York City and Buffalo, shows that an average wage laborer meets an annual deficit, and the investigators in Kensington, Philadelphia, eight years later, demonstrate the same result.

These figures seem to assist in substantiating the well-known theory of Lassalle of his Iron Law of Wages in the inevitably narrow margin between the wages of a laborer and the necessities of life. This abnormal situation calls into question the American standard of living, the maintenance of which is continued by the erection of tariff barriers, and gradually restrictive immigration measures, amounting even, in the case of the yellow races, to a withholding of American citizenship.

Our lawmakers necessarily reflect the opinion of the people as a whole, but with the changing attitude of society towards this social problem, there is distinctly discernible a tendency towards a direct dealing with the causes underlying a low standard of living.

In order to obtain the requisites of a normal standard of living in various localities, it is necessary, first, that society should educate itself through its educational centres, churches and civic associations, as well as through an impartial investigation of condition and of the well-being of the laborers of the world. As a direct result of this inventory, a fair standard of living may be established through legislation which would eliminate such spectres of modern life as irregularity of employment, insecurity of work, infant mortality, mal-nutrition of children, and all other kindred evils.