Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1916-07-02
HOW TO BOOST WAGES
(By George A. Lriggs.l

(By George A. Lyiggs.)
 I don't know whether many people have the same feeling about it, but do know that every time l read seri ous articles about efficiency, thrift sobriety and so forth, they give mt the fidgets. am not opposed to these things of course, but what a will-o the-wisp it is to expect any of then to better the condition of labor.
 If all men doubled their efficiency th.n the work of the world could Dc done by half the number of workers And they would do it for less paA per day than they now get. Ina conclusion to me seems inevitable.
 If through thrift and economy pe>. pie live on half as much as they d. now, then wages would be core spondingly reduced. What else coult happen in a world where, due t artificial conditions, there are always more men than there are jobs. The law of competition is written as deeply in the economical constitution of things as in the law of gravitatio: in physics.
 Practically # means that when there are more men than jobs the tendency of wages is down to the lowest amount on which the workers can live. On the other hand, if there were more jobs than men. then the tendency of competition would be tc raise wages to the level of what the workers produces.
 l have no fault to find with com petition. It is simply natural law In itself it is neither good nor bad Its goodness or badness depends on the way society adjusts itself to it If there are more jobs than men then competition is good. If there are more men than jobs it is bad The real question then is not what we shall do about compe etition, but how we may create a condition where the existing ratio between men and jobs will be reversed.
 This can be done in many ways but only one of them seems practi- cable. One impractical way would be to encourage drunkenness. If enough workers were incapac:tated by drink the sober ones would get better wages. This would not be because they were sober, but because the others were drunk. When the drunks signed the pledge and went back to work, then the number of sober men competing for jobs would be so in- creased that wages would fall.
 This suggestion is absurd of course but it is none the less logical. There is way, however, by which tthe ratio betweetl men and jobs may be per manently changed; by which the wages of all men may be increased And under such circumstances every one could be free from the fear that his increase was at another's expense
 Put Men in Country.
 This way had a try out in this country. IL is responsible for the fact that wages as rule have been higher hare than elsewhere. Let me tell you about it.
 When our country became nation it consisted of thirteen colonies scat tered along the Atlantic seaboard Back of these colonies stretching out for three thousand miles to the Pa ciiic. was vast back yard' of fer tile and unused land. If Bill Jones or Tom Smith, working ill factory in Boston or Baltimore or elsewhere, be- came dissatisfied with bis job it was a simple thing for him to leave and take up a quarter section or what ever he could work of this unused back yard
 By doing this he took himself out of competition with the workers of Boston and Baltimore. He became the employer of his own labor. It was a cinch that he would not go back to his old job for less than he could make working for himself. But he did not get all the benefit. Nor by any means. When enough Bill Joneses and Tom Smiths had followed his example. there was scarcity O. labor in Boston and Baltimore. Every worker there was benefited. Wages went up. The workers that remained automatically received this benefit without effort on their part.
 The departure of enough Bill Joneses and Tom Smiths did the trick for all. 1t created a condition in the cities wherein there we're more jobs than men. IL automatically es- abolished a minimum wage. That minimum-for all workers-was the amount any average man could make for himself on the hitherto unused land in our national back yard.
 Alexander Hamilton saw all this and tried to head it off. He tried to have a law passed whereby the na- tional domain would not be sold eX- cept in such large tracts that no one but the rich could buy. Fortunately he didn't succeed. And because he dint succeed, the wages of Ameri- can labor were tixed-so long as fre9 land was available-at what average ability could produce employing itself n agriculture.
 That free land is new all, O. prac- tically all gone. There is no further outlet for surplus labor. If it wer2 not for labor unions and other similar influences, wages would soon fall to the European level. They would thus fall because in this country there are now more men than jobs.
 Very well, you may say, but what are we going to do about it: can give you my notion of what we ought to do. ] said a moment ago that practically all of this free land is gone. didn't mean that 1t hasn't gone away. It is still here. But it