The Commonwealth. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1911-1914, 1914-02-12
MORE ABOUT WAGES AND THE
COST OF LIVING.

concentrated on shortening the work
day and increasing the average wage
for men and women. Ut jars upon
ones nerves to have to add, and chill
dren.O
Prof. Scott Nearing, of the Univer'
sity of Pennsylvania, has gone to the
trouble to ascertain, as nearly cor
rectly as possible, to determine just
what the average wage of men and
women is in the United States. He
found that one-half of the male adult
workers earn less than $500 year;
three-quarters of them earn less than
5000 year; and but one-tenth earn
above $500 annually. In the ranks OF
the women wage-earners, the figures
are even less: One-fifth earn less
than 5000 year; nine-tenths receive
less than $500; one-twentieth are paid
more than $500 annually.
Those women who earn less than
5000 per annum, or little more than
sic per month, will be expected to
preserve their responsibility in order
that they may be eligible for those
palaces beyond the skies.
They must pay for shelter, clothing
and food out of an income OF little
more than SIG per month, and at the
same time retain upon their womanly
brows the crown of virtue.
Why should the bosses worry and
get a wrinkle?
They find it easy enough to buy
labor-power on the market at from
5000 to $500 a year.
Why should they pay more than the
current price?
If some of the girls" must have
some of the extras" including a lit
tie recreation, tooth filled with gold,
or with a good dinner now and then,
what's it to the employers, as buyers
of labor-power, how the girls" get
these unnecessary" pleasures, or
Injuries?
But suppose that the actual neces-
saries of life should cost more than,
say, So per week; suppose the cost
of living" should soar still higher;
would the workers thereby be robbed
by the trusts from whose agents the
necessaries of life must be purchased?
Not at all. The bosses would simply
have to meet the increased cost of the
workers maintenance, by an increase
in their wages, either voluntarily or
as the result of strike. The real
robbery of the workers would still
take place in their pay envelopes, not
where they purchased their supplies,
since the cost of their supplies deter
mines how much goes into the pay
envelopes.
If. for example, the democrats re
wise the tariff downward" in such
way as to lower materially the aver
age cost of living, the competition for
Jobs among the workers would make
it possible for the employing class to
revise the wage schedule downward
proportionately
Thus" returning again to Marx,
1.-The cost of production of simple labor
amounts to the cost of the laborer's
subsistence and propagation, and the
price of its cost determines his wages.
Individual laborers, indeed
millions of them, do not receive enough
to enable them to subsist and propa-
gate; but the wages of the whole work
ing class, with all their fluctuations,
are nicely adjusted to" the mean cost
of living, whether this average cost of
subsistence be higher or lower.
For a wage-slave to worry about the
high cost of living is as though a horse
should worry because his owner has
to pay $500 for bale Of hay instead
of S10O, as formerly. AS the horse
must be kept in working condition, he
gets for his labor just what he always
got, his subsistence, enough hay ann
oats TO maintain him as q good work
horse: the extra dollar for feed comes
out OF lne ONHSIi hOt wv VI SSS NS'SN
The same principle applies In the
case of the wage-worker. The only
difference is that the horse is owned
outright by the man who exploits him.
whereas in the case OF the human
work animal It is cheaper TO let him
think he owns his own body. as free
and sovereign citizen: meanwhile the
bosses own the only means by which
said independent and patriotic citizen
can keep himself off the chain-gans.
When he works for wages, the land
and tools. or the machinery, belong TO
the capitalists. and the free and SOW
ereign citizen" is suffered Ia use These