The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-10-06

machine has to be fed, clothed and sheltered. It is true that many who have to buy this labor power have reduced all three to an almost ir- reducible minimum and are still de- vising ways and means of making labor contented with a lower stand ard of living.
 During panicky times there is tendency of the employers, taken in the aggregate, to advantage them, selves by reason of the enormously over-crowded labor market and to still reduce labor below the point of subsistence. Hence it is that the al- most revoltless slaves are in times of stress, notwithstanding the des- perate conditions which prevails, driven to rebel and strikes are ex- ceedingly frequent. Although the labor market is over-crowded, the terms paid are so low that the workers strike. And hence it is, during panics and hard times strikes are so numerous that only when the climax of industrial activity is reached is there any similar ire quency; this is shown at the pre- sent time.
 During times of activity the labor market is relieved of the pressure of an excessive supply. And the workers who find jobs more plenti- ful are then in a position to demand some sort of equalization between the higher costs of living and the rate of wages paid. Although labor is the first to experience the knife of retrenchment during dull times, it is the last to receive any equival- ent increase during times of activity, and hence to obtain some means of meeting the increased costs of living the workers are forced to take such a radical action as in involved in a strike.
 If labor was a simple inert com modity, the employers long ago would have met the needs of the case by paying the higher price ne- cessity demanded. But as it hap pens there are always more than enough men for the jobs at the very highest period of expansion in in dustry, and there is always there fore competition between the indi- viduals owing and having for sale the labor commodity. And those labor owners when unemployed are always feeling the spur of necessity, and they are always driven by the bitter thongs which compel the propertiless to sell themselves to. live. Hence an employer instinctive- ly plays one set of workers against another, and also instinctively views any demand for higher wages as an arrogant demand upon the part of men who don't know when they are we'll off, which is when they have a job. And the employers as a class and as a whole, noting the ac- tivities upon the part of employees to demand better conditions and ig- noring the economic pressure which drives them to do so, organize to fight the men and hence precipitate greater and greater struggles.
 Expansion of industry and great activity in all industrial lines are accompanied therefore with an ever more and more intensified struggle upon the part of the workers for better conditions. They cannot help themselves. Wages while they re- main stationary actually decrease be- cause the purchasing power due to the higher, costs of living naturally decreases. While a man may be paid today the same as he was paid two years ago, since the prices of food staples have increased 2S per cent during that time, his wages are decreased by that amount.
 Of course the employers blame the labor agitators, and their method of spreading this idea helps to make it quite a general belief But the real agitator is an economic force over which neither employers nor employees have any control, and that is the tendency to keep up an equivalence between wages and the price of food, clothing and shelter
 The costs of production and the increased price that has to be paid is chapter in economics that has to be written, and it is certain that so far no proper analysis of the present constitution of society as fart as industry is concerned has heen written Rut uuite regardless