Once again, the cry of the workman for a living wage, is but an indication that the labourer is coming to a realization of the dignity and fullness of manhood, and is inviting others to share in this discovery of himself. Who can turn a deaf ear to his appeal, excepting those who deny a man's right to realize himself? The doctrine of the average wage, that is, the wage which is determined by a "brazen law" of one kind or another, whether that to which the name of Ricardo is attached or some other, equally unmanageable, is fast giving place to that of the living wage. The living wage is the evolution of the average wage; the former phrase declares that men are requiring official dealings to be more humane than of yore, as well as that the law of wages is not an almighty tyrant to which society must bow, but a law which is more or less obedient to the dictates of man's will. There are those among political economists who now maintain it to be more reasonable to claim, that prices must conform to wages, than wages to prices. It is worth while adding in this connection that the living wage is bound to be progressive, as the duty of treating men as persons and not as things, comes to be more firmly imbedded in the public conscience. Some persons are ready to admit the justice of the theory of Christian democracy, though unwilling to accept many of its logical conclusions. The promulgation of the principle of democracy in its mildest form, creates new desires or awakens dormant ones in the undermost men, and of course provision must be made for satisfying these, else the doctrine which gave the desires birth is hideously cruel. A living wage some years since, had the phrase obtained in the language, would have signified for the most part a wage sufficient to sustain animal life. That is, the wage-earning man would have been recognized as an animal but not a person. Or perhaps it would have meant a wage capable of creating economic efficiency, in which case it would have indicated that the wage-earner was viewed as a thing. Now the idea underlying a living wage is a wage sufficient for the sustenance of human life, of life in which there is room for freedom of choice, and where the whole man is taken into consideration.