Bridgeton pioneer., 1907-05-16
BAD FOR THE WAGE FARMERS.
Judqe Grosscup Says Municipal Own
ership Would Lower Wages.

ership Would Lower Wages.
Government control and operation
would also be found, | think, to have
n disadvantaseouS effect upon the spe
cial interest of the laboring man. La
bor sometimes gets less than the en-
terprise employing can afford to pay.
but labor never gets more, at least for
snv length of time. than the enterprise
can afford to pay. Lowered efficiency
therefore means lowered wages. And
public ownership always has been and
always will be on this account attend
ed by lower wages. The men who are
motormen on the municipal street rail-
ways of Glasgow, for instance. get
little less than 13 cents an hour: the
motormen of Chicago get from 21 to
"a cents an hour The locomotive en-
gineer of a German government rail.
road gets $50 per month; the American
locomotive engineer makes easily three
times that much And through the
whole schedule of wages paid by pub
lie and by private enterprises the same
difference runs.
But there is still another side to this
objection, evhat may be called its per-
sonal side, the effect of public owner
ship on organized labor. Much as Ia
Dor organizations have been abused
here and there by opposing interests
and much as here and there labor or
ganizations have abused their privi-
leges. it is in labor organizations that
the laboring man finds and will con-
tinue to find the source Of bettered
conditions.
Asking for higher wages the one,
man is unheard. But the many speak
ing as one make themselves heard. So
that the labor organization is the la.
borers' industrial protector.
But the many speaking as one must
have some one TO whom to speak. some
concrete party with whom to deal.
Under government ownership that par
ty would be the whole public. Let not
the ready sympathy of the people for
alternative measures such as factory
legislation and the like be given too
wide significance. for even there
the task was long and hard. nor the
readiness of the public 10 side in at
times of labor strikes With the en-
ployees. In those situations the pub
lie is an outside party, not the other
party. Until in some public controlled
enterprise there is a demand by the
employee for higher wages or changed
some demand that will di-
rectly cost the public something in dol
lars and cents. the laboring man is
without proof that the public can be
more easily reached than private en-.
terprise.
Something in this line, however, we
already know. Government servants,
from the highest to the lowest, are the
poorest paid people in America. Put,
man for man, against corresponding
grades in private enterprise, the presi-
dent of the United States against the
presidents of the great corporations,
cabinet officers against the managers
of corporation departments, postal
clerks on the railways against express
clerks, laborers against laborers, the
advantage in every case is with the
employee Of the private enterprise.
And this we know, too-that, though
the matter has often been urged, the
people at large will not listen to any
proposition for increase of pay in the
government service. Given then a
private employer or the public as en-
ployer with whom to deal, the one a
thousand times more accessible and in
fnitely prompter to reach results than
the other, to my mind nothing is clear
er than that employment by the public
would be followed by severe impair
ment of the influence and efficiency of
the labor organization and of the good
1t has done for its membership.-Hon
Peter S. Grosscup in American Maga.
zine.