¶ RT. REV. BISHOP WILLIAMS, OF THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF MICHIGAN, SAYS:

¶ "It has been ascertained that while our communion made a considerable advance in number of communicants during the past twenty years, in its Sunday school department it has actually gone backward. We have FEW children attending our Sunday schools and FEWER TEACHERS and OFFICERS than we had twenty years ago.

"This is a STARTLING and an OMINOUS FACT, particularly at this present CRITICAL moment when a heavier weight of responsibility is being laid upon the Sunday school than ever before. We all know that there is a COMMON NEGLECT of RELIGIOUS TRAINING AND SPIRITUAL NURTURE IN THE MODERN HOME, even the homes of Christians and church folk.

We all know that there is and can be at present little or no religious education in our system of public education. The whole burden rests upon the Sunday school. And what can be expected of the Sunday school, with its half-hour once a week, its insufficient methods, its teaching force, composed of amiable, willing and faithful workers but untrained and inexpert (if according to a trustworthy authority, there is only 15 per cent of efficiency developed among public school teachers, what pray, is the percentage of efficiency among Sunday school teachers)? Add to all this the fact of DIMINISHING NUMBERS both among scholars and teachers and you see the proportion and SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SITUATION."

*

ALEXANDER BERKMAN, ANARCHIST, HAS THIS TO SAY:

¶ "As anarchists we are NOW READY to do anything to GAIN the points we desire; we do not wish to do the things that the police and the press expect us to do, because that would be too simple.

"I predict that the SOCIAL REVOLUTION wil COME in the NEAR FUTURE and when it does come the ANARCHISTS will be MORE DARING and more determined than they ever have been before. WE ARE NOW READY TO DO ANYTHING TO GAIN OUR DEMANDS AND TO GAIN OUR RIGHTS."

REBECCA EDELSON, ANOTHER ANARCHIST "MARTYR," DECLARES:

¶ "When the time comes that we can no longer stand this tyranny of law and of capital, we will REVOLT and the force of our upward movement will be felt throughout the country.

"THE TIME HAS ALREADY COME FOR THE WORKINGMAN TO USE DYNAMITE.

"Dynamite is the great equalizer of all

men.

"Dynamite is all powerful.

"I advise you to USE DYNAMITE when you have the OPPORTUNITY and when it is in your power to do so."

HAT do we mean by a living wage? To begin with, there are three things which we do

not mean.

A living wage is not the same as a subsistence wage, nor a wage adequate for the maintenance of productive efficiency, nor a wage that corresponds to any of the current scales of expenditure. It has some reference to all of these standards, but it is identical with none of them. If it were the equivalent of mere subsistence, it subsistence, it could not become the basis of discussion; for even now practically every worker gets sufficient remuneration to keep him alive.

A wage that will maintain the laborer at a normal level of productive efficiency is considerably higher than a subsistence wage, and in the long run would perhaps not fall far below a living wage; yet it is vitally defective, inasmuch as it regards the laborer primarily as a means to national production or social welfare. It applies to a human being the same standard of valuation that is employed in the case of a draught-horse or a locomotive. As to the current scales or standards of living, they are so flexible and so varied that none of them can be forthwith adopted as a universally applicable measure of a minimum living wage in any given territory.

Briey defined, a living wage is a wage adequate to a livelihood. It is that amount of remuneration which will provide the laborer with a livelihood becoming to, worthy of, proper for a human being. Hence the ideas of a living wage and a decent livelihood are fundamentally moral rather than physical or economic. They regard the laborer as a person, as a quasi-sacred being, as one possessed of intrinsic worth, as "an end in himself." The laborer is not conceived as a mere means to any other individual, or to any social purpose or interest. He is a person, morally obliged and morally privileged to pursue self-perfection, to develop his personality, to live a reasonable human life. For this purpose he must have the means of exercising and developing all his faculties, physical, mental, moral and spiritual. Το what degree? Well, to some degree; to a reasonable degree; to that degree at least which is necessary in order that he may live as a human being and not as a horse or a pig. So much at least is embraced in the idea of a decent livelihood.

Elements of a Decent Livelihood.

In more concrete terms, a decent livelihood comprises food, clothing and housing sufficient in quantity and quality to maintain the worker in normal health, in elementary com

fort, and in an environment in which morality and religion can be safeguarded with a reasonable amount of effort.

It embraces, moreover, that quantity of provision for the future which is necessary for elementary security and contentment; and sufficient opportunities for recreation, amusement, social intercourse, education, reading matter and church membership to conserve health and strength and to exercise in some degree the higher faculties. Although these statements may still seem to be somewhat vague, their meaning could be readily put into more definite and satisfactory terms, in any community, by any committee of intelligent and honest persons. And the estimate of description upon which such a committee would be able to agree would be sufficiently high for all practical purposes.

Once the members of the committee acknowledge that a human being is a moral entity whose needs are on an essentially different and higher level that the needs of a brute, they would find it practically easy to agree upon a minimum of goods and opportunities which would reasonably meet safeguard all the worker's essential needs and purposes.

and

Now, a wage adequate to provide the individual with all these requisites is a living wage, except in the case of adult men. Since the headship of a a family is necessary for the normal development of personality, for right and reasonable life, the material means required for the proper discharge of this function must, generally speaking, be included in the laboring man's decent livelihood and living

wage.

The Grounds of the Claim.

HE grounds upon which the claim to a living wage may be based are moral, religious,

social and popular.

First comes the moral basis. Like all other persons, the laborer has a natural right to live from the bounty of the earth; for, on the one hand, all men are of equal moral or intrinsic value, and, on the other hand, God has made the earth the common heritage of all His children, whereby they are to live.

Furthermore, men have equal rights to live human lives, to a decent livelihood, from this undivided heritage. To withhold from some persons the means of living decently, as befits human beings, is no more reasonable than to withhold from them the means of their subsistence; to deprive them of their subsistence is no more justifable than to take away their liberty, or their lives.

While these rights differ in degree of importance, they are all essential, all necessary to the perfection and development of personality.

If the intrinsic worth of the human being does not imply a moral claim to life worthy of a human being, it is a mere form of words, and affords no moral protection against any sort of physical aggression, even maiming or murder.

Like all other rights, however, the right to a decent livelihood from the goods of the earth is limited and conditioned. It is valid only on conditions that are reasonable. Of these, two are especially to be considered: the laborer must normally perform a reasonable amount of work, and the product must be sufficiently large to afford a decent livelihood for all that share in causing it.

Assuming that both these conditions are verified in the present system, we see that the laborer's right to a decent livelihood under the capitalist regime takes the form of a right to a living wage. In the present social organization, there is no other way by which this right can become effectual. In these circumstances, the right to a living wage is as valid as the right to