The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-23
LOWER LIVING IS
 SEEN BY INGALLS,
Outlook For Business In Need full Things Is Good, Insti-
 tute Survey Indicates

NEW YORK, Feb. 22.-The sale of living for the American people as a whole is lower than before the war, ac cording to Dr. W. R. Ingalls,, New York mining engineer and economist, who has just completed a survey of the economic prospect for 1924 for the American Institute of Mining and Met. allurgical Engineers.
 Dr. Ingalls,, member of the Bureau of Economic Research, thinks that the immediate outlook for business regard ing things needed for direct use is good, but that it is not so good for things that the upbuilding of mines, railways factories, etc., require.
 1T still see the economies of this country, as well as the rest of the world, dominated by the consequences of the war, and I think that it will be many years before we are clear of them," he says. "In the meanwhile there will be ups and downs in busi- | ness.
 Underlying everything is the de- struction of the war, which brought Austria, Germany and Russia to ruin and impoverished other countries. Not even the United States escaped physi- cal loss.
 See Mental Unbalance.
 "Yet in Europe and America alike, there developed a mental unbalance in the thoughts of men that in some way the war had produced conditions where by men could enjoy an improved scale of living without being constrained to work so hard as formerly. There de- velOped other conditions which have put serious obstacles in the way of the in- ternational division of labor. These adverse developments may be charac- terized as the international unbalance.
 "In the United States fundamental consequence of the war was the upset ting of the old economic equilibrium in our domestic system. This produced what l call the primary unbalance: be- tween property and management on the | one hand and labor on the other; and the secondary unbalance among classes of labor, whereby some of them have benefited greatly while others have suf- fered acutely. There are tertiary and quarternary unbalances among the di- visions and groups of classes of labor.
 "The economic discomfort of the farmers is ascribable in part to the in ternational unbalances and in part to the domestic primary unbalance, the farmers being owners of property who have suffered at the hands of town la- Dor. Similarly is the unhappy position of the white collar classes of labor at tributable to the secondary unbalance among workers themselves.
 Below Pre-SNar Scale.
 "I do not think that the American people as whole are enjoying so good scale of living as pre-war, although some classes have improved their status as consequence of the unbalancing. A fundamental reason for this opinion is that we are not producing enough, which is ascribable in part to the in. creased diversion of labor to service, and in part to the slackening in hours and efficiency per hour by those who are working as direct producers. Although engineering and manage ment have done something to offset this, it has not been possible for them to develop complete compensation within so short a time.
 The effects of these fundamental conditions are bound to be slow. We may go through 1924 with the general feeling that all is we'll, and indeed things may superficially look so. We may even try to make some sort of a forecast from these fundamental condi- tions.
 "In a general way we may expect a continuance in activity in the produc- tion of consumers goods and dullness in those branches that pertain espe- cially to capital goods. There will be upswings and downswings, according as producers misread the signs and overproduce some things with the re- suit of accumulation of stocks, whereof orderly digestion must then be awaited. The setback in business activity in the latter half of 1923 is explainable in that way. In all kinds of production we shall for long time experience the effects of the excessive provision of pro- dncing capacity that happened during the war.
 | Great Strike Foreseen.
 "The desire to make use of surplus capacity will contract margins of prof. its and will be a constant incentive toward overproduction of some kinds of goods. Labor, with no understanding Of real conditions, will behave more and more in strangling ways. Even now we foresee a great strike of bituminous coal miners next April.
 ''To those who will weigh these words much that seems paradoxical will become clear. Retail traders are doing large business and are optimistic The manufacturers of many kinds of machinery, on the contrary, finds things slow, and in their sentiment range from doubtful to pessimistic The one has to do with consumers goods, the other with capital goods.
 Any forecast should, of course take into account the imminence oi German collapse and should allow fol surprises elsewhere. American eco nomics are not independent of those ot the rest of the world.
 Let anybody draw what deducation. from these opinions that he will. NJ, own deduction is that real well-beinl awaits the removal of good many eco homie restrictions, with which we hay, enmeshed ourselves, and the restoration of the old economic equilibrium
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