The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1923-06-15
ADEQUATE AND EVER RISING WAGE
NECESSARY TO LIFE OF INDUSTRY
Growth of Commodity Production Per Person Cited Declaration
That Wage Cutting Means Disaster

BY international Labor News Service.
Washington, ID. C.-Samuel Com
pers, president of the American Fed
GRAFTON of Labor, writing in the June
American Federationist, cites a pub
lie address by Herbert Hoover, United
States secretary of commerce, in sup
port of organized labor's contention
that there is no legitimate excuse for
any employer to seek to reduce wages
or in any way oppose an adequate
standard of living for American wage
earners.
"The almost prodigal productivity
of American labor" declares Mr.
Gompers, makes unnecessary any
thing but generosity in connection
with any human factor that serves
usefully in the industrial machinery
of the republic"
Recalling that two months ago the
American Federationist directed at
tention to statistics quoted by Julius
Barnes, president of the United
States Chamber of Commerce, show
| ing the tremendous increase in pro-
ductivity of American industry, Mr.
Gompers adds that Mr. Hoover has
made an important contribution to the
facts already pointed out by Mr.
Barnes.
Mr.. Gompers quotes from an ad-
dress given by Mr.. Hoover before the
United States Chamber of Commerce
in New York in May, in which the
secretary of commerce said that it
would be possible for every Ameri-
can to enjoy the standards of living
of ten years ago even if the country
were to lay off two million workers
He declares that Mr.. Hoover was
speaking of a real gain and not an
apparent gain in productivity and eff
| fciency, and after giving extracts at
length from Mr. Hoover's address, he
continues:
eve have achieved enormous gains
in the state of general well-being by
improvement in human relations and
in mechanical productive processes.
! If reason could have full sway for
only a brief period, eliminating the
| disorganization and the conflict which
still exists, the American people could
easily enough build for themselves a
paradise almost beyond imagination.
"To cite once more a statement
| made by Mr.. Hoover in this address,
he states it as fact that 1--WE sell rs
per cent of all the automobiles which
move in international trade today and
do so at real wages, three times
| those of some of our competitors" !"
1t is therefore not the payment of
adequate wages that hampers indus
trial progress in any direction.
! "What is true of American automo-
biles in the export trade is true of
other American products in the same
| trade and furthermore it is true of
American products at home, in COM
petition with imported commodities in
all except an nsignificantly small
group of articles which need not be
considered in any general survey of
the field.
Rising Wage Stimulates
"The fact is that the payment of
adequate and increasing wages is
a stimulant to industry, necessary to
the very life of industry. Can any
one imagine any successful industry
in America today continuing to exist
if wages were the wages of ten years
ago?
"The surest road to bankruptcy and
national destruction would be re-
turn to the wages that were current
at the beginning of the ten-year
period of which Mr.. Hoover speaks