The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-08-25
WAGES, PRICES
WILL RISE IN
NEAR FUTURE
Recent Events Indicate Short
age of Labor Near at Hand
Many Miners Working In
Big Steel Mills.
INN MIGRATION SLUMPS
BY MARK SULLIVAN

by MAHkA SULLIVAN
WASHINGTON, D. c., Aug. 25-l
Several aspects Of the business and
Industrial situation suggest some in
teresting developments in the fairly
near future. Although some o. the
elements in the situation have 10 pre-
cedents in the past and are there !
| fore difficult to estimate the net of
the indications, for the immediate fu- i
ture at least, points toward a period /
| of rising prices and the business ac-!
tivity that usually accompanies this !
! phenomenon.
i The past summer has not been such
a period of idleness as is commonly
/ assumed, merely because of the coal
mines were not working, and because
| some of the railroad workers were on
! strike.
/ In point of fact, what happened was
that many miners instead of remain
| ing idle, went to work in the steel
mills which are frequently found ad-
! jacent to the mines.
i With the ending of the strike it was
! obvious that these men would tend to
go back to the mines, and it is rea-
sonable to infer that the recent in
crease in wages in the steel trade was
made to meet this situation.
1 Got Into Other Work
/ In the same way many of the strik-
ing railroad men did not remain idle,
but went into other work. Many o.
them, in fact, while figuring as strik-
ers on one railroad actually moved
to other shops on other lines and
went to work as non-union men.
At the same time the beginning of
higher prices of greater activity and
Of what may turn out to be a short
/ age of labor, we have on the farms
of the United States crops of unpre-
| cedented size. AS to the effect of
these large crops on prosperity on the
farms, or at least on the prices likely
/ to be received by the farmers for
heir products there is sharp differ
ence of opinion.
; Some claim that with increasing
J domestic activity in America, and
; with rising wages for labor, our crops
J will be consumed largely by our own
people at prices satisfactory to the
: farmers.
Opinion Differs.
Some others claim with great conf
dence that the presence of large crops
at a time when the foreign market
: for these crops is reduced by reason
2 of conditions in Europe, may possibly
! bring to the farmer the experience of
5 satisfaction with the size of his crop.
2 but dissatisfaction with the price that
: he gets for it.
2 American farmer may shortly run
into an experience which will tend to
change his point of view about the de-
i STABILITY of a high, tariff and about
: the Republican policy of refusal to
e do anything to stimulate international
e trade by restoring international re-
d lations. Just what the farmers may
T be thinking of one and two years from
now as the result of his experience
t in the marketing of his present big
n crops will have a good deal of influ
e ence On the presidential politics OF
l. 1924. .-
e immigration Slumps.
o One of the fundamental elements
l. not commonly taken into account, is
h the limitation on immigration. If the
o present immigration law had not beer
working, the present summer, anc
even more conspicuously the coming
fall, probably would have seen immi
grants coming in to the United States
as such rate that it would hardly bt
l1dpt O1CAI W CSLI14dlO IL e1S AASSA1 SA>
two million a year.
~ AS it is, the present immigration
= law, in the way it works out, limit!
y our influx of labor from abroad Il
somewhere between 800 and 500,00(
also the bulk of this immigration il
not labor in the sense in which th'
ID term is commonly used but comes
,e ltrgely from races and natlonalltle
IA who tend to go into restricted lines
like the tailoring trade, small sRol
keeping, and the like.
NJ Wages To Increase
b. It must be clear that the partial clos
~ ing up of what has been for a genera
ls tion a flowing spring of raw labor vii
90 have the tendency, whenever times o
- business activity arise, to make highe
pr wages for the labor already in tn
country and perhaps also for organize
r.. labor to have rather more power thal
st before. Our present immigratio
al policy is certain to be sustained
=. There was never any question upo
~ which there was greater unanimit
to of public opinion
~ A good deal of the motives benin
=. the spread of the Ku Klux Klan col
a. sists of intense suspicion against IN
~ migration. If the present law is
be changed at all, the change wi
probably be in the direction of create
-. Limitation.
There are persons who from purel
~ business and economic point of vie
~ depIore this But the number of pc
- sons who look at it from a social an
- national point of view, and who, frol
20 10 that point of view strongly indorse
~ - is immensely larger That this chang
- - in immigration policy is likely to wor
- - certain changes in America is clea
II II Copyright 1922 by the New Yo1
~ Evening Post, Inc.)
res -