The labor world., 1917-05-26
THE: MENACE.
By Scott Nearing

The financial and business papers in
all parts of the country are alarmed
over a new menace--the most serious
one that has confronted the Ameri-
can business world since the outbreak
of the war. Business men every
where are profoundly concerned over
the prospect of a big increase in
wages.
The ordinary so;:. ces of labor sup
ply have failed. Immigration has
practically ceased. The birth rate IS
being cut in all of the belligerent
countries. Meanwhile there is far
greater demand for labor, a demand
that will become particularly acute at
harvest time. Unemployment, which
in normal year might have gone
to is or even 20 per cent did not get
much above 7 or 8 percent last win
ter. At the present time it is prob
ably we'll Glow per cent. The gen.
eral labor shortage with its intensest
pressure during the harvest season
cannot but result in an increase in
wages such as men have not known in
modern times. If the law Of supply
and demand is permitted to operate
in this case as it has operated dur
ing the past few months in the case
G. potatoes, pork, shoes and steel,
wages might double in a month.
Once wages are raised they are re-
duced with difficulty. Workers be-
come accustomed to high return and
resent any cut in the wage scale.
Hence the seriousness of situation
that promises widespread wage ad-
vances.
During the past 40 years the bulk
of American wage-earners have
worked for a wage that represented
bare subsistence or less. Therefore
millions of them lived in poverty.
The present situation promises a liv-
ing wage and more for even the
humblest worker.
"There's many a Slip" however,
and it now looks as though business
would find a way. From all sides
come proposals that THE PRISON
ERS OF WAR, TAKEN BY THE
ALLIES IN BATTLE, ARE TO BE
| BROUGHT TO THE UNITED
STATES AND SET TO WORK. In this
with its inevitable wage increase may
be forestalied.
Incidentally, the increased cost Of
! living alone, since 1912, would justify
| a wage increase Of from so to 80 per
cent. Quite as matter Of course,
| farmers who were glad to get dol
| lar for wheat a few years since are
now Indifferent to three dollars, while
| other business men have doubled,
! trebled or quadrupled their profits
since the war began. The huge for
| tunes that have been made in the
! handling of food and the other neces-
saries of life are ''all in days work" )"
They cause little comment and almost
| no excitement. It is taken for grant,
i ed, in business circles, that profits
should increase many fold in this
crisis, but the possibility that the
wage-earners who received 80 cents
an hour in 1912 are to get 60 cents in
1917 or that the five dollar a day
minimum of 1914 will become a ten
dollar day minimum in 1918 is too
terrifying to contemplate. "Such a
situation contains alarming elements
that cry aloud for redress" and they
may be redressed in the future by the
ir portation Of involuntary (slave) Ia
Dor from war-torn Europe.
The suggestion that European pris-
oners of war be imported to work
for American employers is welcomed
in many business circles. It is prom
ising. Thus the danger (of high
wages) may be met. Thus the plague
COT wage increases all along the line)
may be stayed, and the (business) in
terests of America may be protected
and safeguarded against the menace
of high wages.