The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-18

generous as we coulo WISH! IS IL not true that we seldom stop to analyze how our employer finds the money to pay us?
 "The product pays the wages"
 If all of us could only get that thor oughly fixed in our mind, might 1t not do something to bring about less mis- understandinl and unfriendliness be- tween employers and their workers?
 I confess that when I was a young man I had the notion that my boss was the sole arbiter of how much his work ers' pay should be and could be.
 Do not a very large number of work CTS still have this view?
 Of course, 1t is all wrong.
 How and why?
 Money cannot be paid out in wages until it Is first taken in. That's clear, isn't it? What brings in money for wages and everything else?
 The product sold. Nothing else. It dosent matter in the least what the product may be.
 A quart of wages cannot be taken out cf the treasury that contains only a pint of money. Even the best inten- tioned employer cannot go on paying out more than their product brings in.
 How this whole matter works out can fe gathered perhaps best of all from ali instance where the employer was a trade union, for 1t Is to be assumed that a trade union would, if it were in the cards at all, gladly pay the wages demanded by fellow unionists.
 The facts apparently are that Warren B. Stone, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, owns and controls, along with other members of the engineers brotherhood coal mine and that a dispute over wages has arisen between Mir. Stone and John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America. The Newark, N. J.. News thus describes what has hap pened:
 What would mapped If union labor, through investing it's savings in an in- dustry, stepped overnight into the shoes of the employer anf came slam up against union wage demands that pre- cluded any wage for the savings in- vested?
 "The answer Is instructively and di- vertingly provided by the correspond ence which President Lewis of the miners has had with President Stone of the locomotive engineers.
 MT. Stone, besides being head of the engineers brotherhood, which runs banks and does other things to employ it's growing capital, is chairman or the board of a soft coal mining company. In it some of the engineers in the union have invested some $3,0O0,O00. Last April the mine, which was a union mine, shut down because it could not get it's men to accept a wage cut, and it is still closed.
 MT. Lewis took up with MT. Stone the desire of the men to have the com pany sign the existing union agree ment, which continues existing high wage rates for three years. MT. Lewis wrote that 1t was 'an intolerable situa- tion' when a mine, largely owned by union workers, and directed by union leaders, refused to accede to such de- mands. MT. Stone replied that the miners had refused to continue work ing at the present rate while an agree ment was worked out for a new wage rate, which the company hoped would be lower"
 His stockholders. including the union engineers, MT. Stone pointed out, "were entitled to some return on their invest ment," but under prevailing market con- ditions enforced by the miners union cit is impossible for the union mines to break even."
 In reply MT. Lewis retorted that MT. Stones company was no different in this respect from "any of the other coal companies which have agreements with our organization" It must shoul- der its own problems.