The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-07-25
SEEING THE LIGHT.

The Carpenters union of Baton
Rouge, La, has made a voluntary cut
in the wages OF it's members. The re-
duction is made, it is announced, for
the purpose of stimulating building.
Thoughtful wage earners are be-
ginning to realize thA an unduly high
wage scale is a doubtful advantage.
First, because increased cost of pro-
duction requires an enhanced market
price, which curtails consumption and
leads to curtaiied employment. Sec
ond, because general high wage levels
add to the cost of living, which abb
serbs at least 80 per cent of the work
mans total income. The saving at
the high wage level is so little above
the possible saving at the low wage
level as not to compensate for the loss
OF steady employment.
1t Isl said that three million five
hundred thousand men in the United
States are without employment.
Many of these are unemployed be-
cause they refuse to wor,: at 81 per
hour demanding 1925 per hour or
approximately $40 per day. Upon a
basis of - per day, the waste to the
nation on account of this unemploy-
ment amounts to five billion dollars
annually, approximately the cost of
running the national government.
This loss estimate includes only loss
of wages. 1t does not include the loss
of lives. the destruction of property.
the bitterness of feeling, and the in
efficiency in production resulting
from INDUSTRIAL warfare and a lack of
the spirit of cooperation and good
will. These latter items, If they could
be measured in money, would more
than equal TIE direct loss in wages.
High wages, when they are not so
high as to check production thru
their unfavorable reaction on buying
power, or If they do not operate 20
interfere with competition. are a dis
tinct benefit to the economic we'll
being of any country. So essential 20
the general welfare Is the prosperity
of the great body of manual laborerg,
skilled and unskilled, that for many
years it was the popular belief that
wages never could be 50 high that the
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offset any incidental Ill effects.
Probably for the first time in his
tory we have learned that we can
have too much of so good a thing las
high wages. During the war and es-
pecially in the two years after the
Isigning of the armistice we began TO
have this truth sternly brought home
to US. Labor charges played SO large
a part in the cost of everything
bought by the public that wage re-
auctions have been hailed as signs of
returning sanity.
Receding wages are either well
coined or accepted with equanimity
because 1t is recognized that the bene-
fits arising from the general rise in
wages meant higher production costs
and higher prices which nullified the
gains from the fatter pay envelopes.
! 1t is as much to the interest of la
Dor to have a downward revision In
wage scales, as it is in the interest IT
the consumer of labors products.
This is because high wage scales nre
no longer synonymous with high
wages. High wage scales not only in
crease costs to such an extent that the
burden on the consuming public be-
comes unbearably onerous, but they
react upon the workers themselves
and prevent them from getting a nor
NAL return on their earning power.
This results in three distinct losses
to society. In the first place produc-
ton costs are kept high because OF
the workers insistance on the main
} tenance of the scale, thus resulting
in unjustifiably high prices. Second,
production is kept down and the pub
lie wealth diminished to that extent.
Third, and most important of all 70
: the body Of 1aborers as a whole, the
aggregate Of wage payments is small
er than it would be II the scale were
lower and production were going on
closer to capacity. Fewer men are
at work, and even those at work are
employed on leaner schedules. I'm
employment makes vast hole in the
total payments to masses.
=
A. E. McKinstry, vice president OF