In America the same problem has received the attention of various careful enquirers, the most recent of whom, perhaps, is Father Ryan, Professor of ethics and economics in the St Paul Seminary, Minnesota.[60] In this volume may be found a careful estimate of the figure that may be taken as affording a “living wage” in different parts of the United States. Professor Albion Small, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, is quoted as having said “a few years ago” that “No man can live, bring up a family, and enjoy the ordinary human happiness on a wage of less than one thousand dollars a year” (£200).[61] Mr John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers, says, in a passage quoted by Professor Ryan: “In cities of from five thousand to one hundred thousand inhabitants, the American standard of living should mean, to the ordinary unskilled workman with an average family, a comfortable house of at least six rooms. It should mean a bathroom, good sanitary plumbing, a parlour, dining-room, kitchen and sufficient sleeping room that decency may be preserved and a reasonable degree of comfort maintained. The American standard of living should mean, to the unskilled workman, carpets, pictures, books and furniture with which to make his home bright, comfortable and attractive for himself and his family, an ample supply of clothing suitable for winter and summer and above all a sufficient quantity of good, wholesome, nourishing food at all times of the year. The American standard, moreover, should mean to the unskilled workman that his children should be kept at school until they have attained the age of sixteen at least, and that he is enabled to lay by sufficient to maintain himself and his family in times of illness or at the close of his industrial life, when age and weakness render further work impossible, and to make provision for his family against premature death from accident or otherwise.”[62] The minimum wage upon which a family could be supported, in towns of the size named, was estimated by Mr Mitchell in 1903 at $600 a year (£120). In larger cities the cost would, he considered, be higher. Professor Ryan is, no doubt, right in saying that “the irreducible minimum of necessaries and comforts” could not “now” (he was writing in October 1905) be obtained in any city of the United States for less than $600, and that though that sum might be “_possibly_ a Living Wage in the moderately sized cities of the West, North and East ... in some of the largest cities of the last-named regions, it is certainly _not_ a Living Wage.”[63] Having established this figure for annual income Professor Ryan goes out to enquire into its actual prevalence and from various official reports and statistics draws the conclusion that, “the number of male adults receiving less than $12.50 (£2, 10s.) per week, in 34 manufacturing industries was, in 1890, 66%, and, in 1900, 64%.[64]