The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1922-01-27
A Low WAGE
System Exceedingly Per-
niciOus
Destructive of Accumulated
Wealth Producing Forces,
Cheapens Human Life
BY s. B. Hedges

| Possibly the greatest blunder ever
made by the great American republic
was the introduction of slavery, as a
means of securing cheap labor; for
cheap labor debates the buying power
/ of any community. 1t reacts as
curse on any community harboring
the delusion; it acts as curse on any
person practicing this delusive senti-
ment; it reacts as a curse on individ-
uals entertaining or promoting the
low wage system in an effort to pau
perize worthy and willing workers of
any community. A we'll organized CO.
operative community center of asso-
ciated organizations may be a logical
solution for this enervating peril as
sailing our chief source of liberty of
choice in choosing our manner of sell
ing our labor and accumulated skill
and experience.
Let US reason little more closely
on the phrase: The measure of pros
perity for a community is the amount
of weekly wage paid out TO its work
ers contentedly busy on necessities
and accessories useful for the health
and happiness of the community's
citizens, or in filling commercial de-
mands on it, AS the slavery of hu-
mans acted as curse, it now seems
that the slavery of machines is be-
ginning TO react as curse, under the
method the machines are operated at
the present time. If man chooses to
face the necessity Of selling in non
buying market, let him continue GO
ing his solitary way in trying to sell
labor and capital in the form Of ac-
cumulated skill and experience in an
unorganized manner to well organ
lied group of greedy profteers.
The group spirit of our republic is
cemented closely, through co-opera-
tive unionization of its component in
dividual and home-ruling states And
grouped under its capacious tent are
all the little unions, each fitted to
cope with its special phase of the one
big unions national life in carrying
on.
More clearly we see as the months
go by, that it is not dividends and
accrued profits that bring prosperity
into a community, but it is the actual
wages paid to it's workers that de-
termines the degree of prosperity.
Deferred dividends can still be paid on
idle machinery, but it lacks the spread
ing power demanded by the citizenry.
For salesman to make sales on a
non-buying market, he must be a
booster of prosperity. AS speciality
statesmen are now having the free
| ing wares, whether it is their own
| individual skill, or the finished pro-
| duct of some other persons, for his
own good and his fellow salesmen's
| ne must organize, and each organiza-
| tion must cooperate with other or
| CARNATIONS for attaining and main
| tanning the individuals rights, in
| choosing our manner of earning a
living by rendering some useful SER
| vice. In some manner the earth we
| live in is so efficiently organized, that
it seems to operate automatically, and
that is probably the highest possible
form of attainment. Perhaps, after
all, gravitation is form of love best
| suited to the needs of inanimate life!
| Who knows of a surety as to whether
it is or not? Cooperate wisely to re
ceive the more abundant life lying
concealed in the cooperative commun-
ity spirit awaiting wise development.