The Connecticut labor news., 1923-06-22
By International Labor News Service

Washington, D. C., June I5.-Sam- uel Gompers, president of the Amer lcan Federation of Labor, writing in the June American Federationist, cites public address by Herbert Hoover, United States Secretary of Commerce, in support of organized labor's con- tention that there is no legitimate ex- cuse for any employer to seek to re- duce wages or in any way oppose an adequate standard of living for Amer iCan 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 ductivity of American industry, Mr. Gompers adds that Mr. Hoover has made an important contribution to the facts already pointed out by Mr. Barnes.
 MT. Gompers quotes from an ad dress given by MT. Hoover before the United States Chamber of Commerce in New York in May, in which the secretary of commerce said that 1t would be possible for every Ameri- can to enjoy the standards of living of 10 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 ap- parent gain in productivity and effic iency and after giving extracts at length from MT. Hoover's address, he continues:
 We 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 Reorganization 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 MT. Hoover in this address, he states 1t as fact that I've sell 75 per cent of all the automobiles which move in international trade today and do SO at real wages, three times S. It. is therefore not the payment of adequate waegs that hampers indus trial progress in any direction.
 What is true of American automo- piles in the export trade is true of trade and furthermore 1t is true of American products at home, in com petition with imported commodities in all group of articles which need not be considered in any general survey cf the field
 Rising Wages Stimulates
 "The fact is that the payment ot adequate and ever-increasing wages is stimulant to industry, necessary to the very life of industry. Can any one imagine any successful industry in America today continuing to exist # wages were the wages of 10 years ago2
 "The surest road to bankruptcy and nationa destruction would be a re- turn to the wages that were current at the beginning of the Io-year period of which MT. Hoover speaks If that unthinkable thing could be done and were done what would be- come of the tremendous productivity ot industry The market would be destroyed. There would be idleness not only for the two million workers of which MT. Hoover speaks but for many millions more-such idleness and misery and disorganization as the country has never known. The absorption of the prodigious output of the industrial machine is made i possible only by high wages.
 "A very capable committee ap- pointed by MT. Hoover conducted ong investigation into the operations of what IS known as the business cycle. Upon conclusion of that in the committee brought ,orth report. Skeptics who have much more than a shadow of right to heir skepticism will say that 1t is yet ar from proven that there is such