Just as the woman worker who lives with her parents has a right to a wage sufficient to maintain her away from home, so the unmarried adult male has a right to a family living wage. If only married men get the latter wage they will be discriminated against in the matter of employment. To prevent this obviously undesirable condition, it is necessary that a family living wage be recognised as the right of all adult male workers. No other arrangement is reasonable in our present industrial system. In a competitive régime the standard wage for both the married and the unmarried men is necessarily the same. It will be determined by the living costs of either the one class or the other. At present the wage of the unskilled is unfortunately adjusted to the subsistence cost of the man who is not married. Since two prevailing scales of wages are impossible, the remuneration of the unmarried must in the interests of justice to the married be raised to the living costs of the latter. Moreover, the unmarried labourer needs more than an individual living wage in order to save sufficient money to enter upon the responsibilities of matrimony. Only two objections of any importance can be brought against the male labourer's claim to a family living wage. The first is that just wages are to be measured by the value of the labour performed, and not by such an extrinsic consideration as the needs of a family. It has already been answered in this and the preceding chapters. Not the economic but the ethical value of the service rendered, is the proper determinant of justice in the matter of wages; and this ethical value is always the equivalent of at least a decent livelihood for the labourer and his family. According to the second objection, the members of the labourer's family have no claim upon the employer, since they do not participate in the work that is remunerated. This contention is valid, but it is also irrelevant. The claim of the labourer's family to sustenance is directly upon him, not upon his employer; but the labourer has a just claim upon the employer for the means of meeting the claims of his family. His right to this amount of remuneration is directly based neither upon the needs nor the rights of his family, but upon his own needs, upon the fact that family conditions are indispensable to his own normal life. If the wife and young children were self supporting, or were maintained by the State, the wage rights of the father would not include provision for the family. Since, however, family life involves support by the father, the labourer's right to such a life necessarily includes the right to a wage adequate to family support. _Other Arguments in Favour of a Living Wage_