The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1919-09-05
HIGH COST OF LIVING MUST DROP
OR "THERE'[[ Be HELL TO PAY!'
(By Chester M. Wright, for Labor
Papers.)

Living!
That is beyond doubt the greatest
domestic issue in the United States.
Cost of Living is being talked
about in every home.
Men either joke or swear about
it over their noon-time lunch.
Women frown and worry over it
on every trip to the store.
Children get poorer shoes, and
fewer shoes, because of it.
Food that once was common has
departed from many tables.
What's to be done about it?
Employers say wages have gone
up and that's why the cost of liv-
ing has gon3 up.
There's just little truth in that
possibly 10 per cent of truth.
Many persons have proved that you
can accomplish wonders on a solu-
tion of 10 per cent truth.
But if the increase in cost of liv-
ing had been forced by increases in
wages, then it wouldn't be necessary
to raise wages again to meet the
increase in cost of living.
Something has slipped somewhere.
The fact is that the cost of living
has gone up much more than wages
have gone up.
In a Mid Western city milk wag-
on drivers were given raise of SIS
per week.
Milk was advanced a cent a quart.
Result Each driver took in on his
route about three times the amount
of his wage increase through that
extra cent quart, The milk COM
pany profiteered.
That is sample of what has
happened time after time.
The price of one aluminium kitch-
en- utensil was doubled to meet
trifling wage increase-and the
company got back seven times what
1t paid the workers in increased
rates
One of the biggest manufacturing
retailers in the shoe business is to-
day charging in New York $16.50
for mems shoes that sold for $3.50
before the United States entered the
war. This is a raise of $40 in two
years. And most of the increase in
price has been added within the last
sold for $14. To charge this ad-
vance to higher labor costs is out
of the question!
There is much ado over the coun-
try because workers keep on asking
for more money. They are called
greedy and unreasonable.
Careful inquiry shows that it
isn't more wages, as such, that the
workers are trying to get, but more
BUYING POWER.
Less profiteering would steady
the situation everywhere.
The other day Warren S. Stone,
and the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers Advisory Board laid be-
fore President Wilson a statement.
This statement set forth that there
must be either
Reduced living costs, or
Higher wages.
1t isn't especially larger num-
ber of dollar bills that workers
want. 1t is dollar bills that will
buy more.
Grand Chief Stone told the Presi-
dent that whereas So before the
war were worth 500 cents, today
S. are worth only $2.15. He said
that despite the increased wages
the engineers today actually are
earning less than they did before
the war.
"Conscienceless profiteering bp
the great interests" was what Stone
told the President. And w. D. Lee,
OF the Railroad Trainmen, followed
by saying "Therell be hell to pay
unless some relief is found.
New York newspaper compositors
recently won an award of 50 per
week wage increase in arbitration
proceedings. Frank Morrison, Sec
retary of the American Federation
of Labor, was the arbitrator. In
his award Morrison said:
ITO ask the printers to continue
to accept a standard of living lower
than the publishers themselves
agreed to when they accepted pre-
war rates is no more equitable than
to ask the publishers to reduce their
living standards to meet the IN
creased production cost.
Morrison said further;
"If the printer had received IN
:reases based upon the $40 a week