New Britain herald., 1918-08-27
"Eixcd Salary" People.

It will surprise nobody that accord 1 Ing to the reports on business condi- tons from all parts of the country l made public by the federal reserve board, the millions of persons living
 on fixed salaries have become econom- 1cal in their expenditures The fixed salary class is in position to say q told you so." The man thus classi- fled knew what was coming. The pinch began in his case before the war, when prices first began to rise; and since America went to battle with the cen-
 tral powers nearly year and a half
 ago his condition has simply gone
 from bad to worse.
 Most of the persons who rejoice in
 the social distinction of getting sal aries instead of the more plebian wages, get salaries that are small One thousand dollars a year may be a sal ary; a 1nachinist or munitions worker getttng $1O day may be paid wages,
 put he has a princely income, com pared With a clerk paid the salary.
 There are not great many individual Incomes of more than $3,OOO a year in America. For the year 1916, the federal income tax reports show that
 only 74,194 persons received between
 $3,O and $4,000 a year. The salaried
 persons who received less than S3.OOO
 are the great majority and their lot is by no means enviable. They pro-
 duce nothing from the soil, nor from
 manufac curing processes, so that what
 they sell cannot easily be marked up
 in price. They usually have services
 generally professional or commercial,
 to dispose of in the open competitive
 market to employers or to clients and
 patients, and they belong to no labor
 unions which progressively make de-
 mands for higher pay as the cost of
 living increases.
 If the ordinary salaried man be-
 1Onged to a strong labor union he
 coul Id not arouse ones sympathy. His economic position, hwever, is almost pitiful compared with that of the or ganized bricklaYers or the journeyman plumbers, or the analgamated tool makers. Food clothes, rent street car
 fares and everything one buys go up in price by leaps and bounds but the poor wretch on a fixed salary sees his income shrink by alarming fits and starts until his problem of making the ends meet, after contributing to all ! the war funds and buying thrift | stamps and Liberty bonds, becomes l almost insoluble. His one way out is,
 of course, through economy unless 1 something happens to force the in
 crease in his salary withoyt the as- 1 sistance of unionism and collective 1 bargaining.
 l The fixed salary class, however,
 should soon be in a stronger economic 1 position by reason of a military draft, which is to be extended up to the max 1 imum age of 45. The country's man l power cannot be drawn upon indeft-
 nitely for the army and navy and the merchant marine without depicting all 1 classes of labor and services and the l effect of this process nut be to place l those left at work even on fixed sala- l ries in a, stronger bargaining position l They will require no labor union to l back them; more courage and firmne l in pressing their individual demands 1 for higher compensation will suffice for 1 1t cannot be easy to fill the vacancies | they may leave. with the general SUD- l ply of men trained in their pursuits
 growing steadily less as the war con- 1 tinues.