ABSTRACT
The fundamental wage, or the wage of unskilled labour, should be a living wage-that is, a wage suitable to the development of the physical, moral, and intellectual attributes of the citizens of a free country. In the modern industrialized State the great mass of the people are dependent for the means of livelihood upon wages received from an employer. F. A. Walker's claim goes even farther: 'every invention in mechanics, every discovery in the chemical art, inures directly and immediately to their benefit'. Thus the wage-earners' share is residual in the sense that even if any one or all of the other parties to production become so engaged in any given increase of the product as to become entitled to an enhanced share in its distribution. The policy of State regulation of wages must still be regarded as experimental, but the application of the principle has been rapidly extended.
