When the present writer was making an estimate of the cost of decent living for a family about eleven years ago, he came to the conclusion that six hundred dollars per year was the lowest amount that would maintain a man and wife and four or five small children in any American city, and that this sum was insufficient in some of the larger cities.[248] Since that time retail prices seem to have risen at least twenty-five and possibly forty-five per cent.[249] If the six hundred dollar minimum were correct in 1905 it should, therefore, be increased to seven hundred and fifty dollars to meet the present range of prices. That this estimate is too low for some of the more populous cities, has been fully proved by several recent investigations. In 1915 the Bureau of Standards put the minimum cost of living for a family of five in New York City at $840.18. About the same time the New York Factory Investigating Commission gave the estimate of $876.43 for New York City, and $772.43 for Buffalo. In 1908, when the cost of living was from ten to thirty per cent. cheaper than to-day, the United States Bureau of Labour found that, "according to the customs prevailing in the communities selected for study," a fair standard of living for a family of five persons among mill workers, was $600.74 in the South, and from $690.60 to $731.64 in Fall River, Massachusetts.[250] According to the "Manly Report" of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, between two-thirds and three-fourths of the adult male labourers of the United States receive less than $750.00 a year, and the same proportion of women workers are paid under eight dollars a week. A considerable majority, therefore, of both male and female labourers fail to obtain living wages. We are still very far from having actualised even the minimum measure of wage justice. FOOTNOTES: [242] Cf. Skelton, "Socialism: A Critical Analysis," p. 202; Menger, "The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour," pp. 8, sq. [243] All the questions treated in this chapter are discussed at much greater length in the author's work, "A Living Wage"; Macmillan; 1906. [244] See chapters xii and xiii. [245] While the statement in the text applies to _all_ labourers of less than average ability, it obviously is applicable only to individual cases among those who are up to the average. These are the workers at the "margin" of the labour force in an establishment, those who could be discharged without causing the industry to shut down. If an employer would rather go out of business than pay a living wage to all his necessary labourers of average ability, he is morally free to do so; but he may not employ them at less than living wages in order to obtain interest on his capital. [246] One of the best statements of the evil social results of low wages will be found in Webb's "Industrial Democracy," vol. II, pp. 749-766. [247] See reports of these commissions in Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California.