The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-27
Outlook for New England Labor

pace, in order to make living. Any who
not keep up, most of those above forty
five years can not are discharged and re-
placed by younger men and women. There are
many illustrations of this speed-up. In num-
erous cotton mills in Massachusetts and Rhode
Island every fourth weaver has been dis
charged and three weavers are now compelled
to do what formerly required the work of four.
The number of spinners is often cut to half,
while $4,000 boot and shoe workers produce
almost as much today as approximately 1900
produced in 1928. This is to say, that every
4 boot and shoe workers now do the work of
men. This increased exploitation of New
England workers is typical Of what has hap
pened throughout the country. Government
studies show that the owners of industry get
about one and half times as much out of
each worker as they took in 1899. and the
greater part of this increased output per work
err has occurred since 1919 and is very little
due to improved machinery in the plants but
almost entirely to the speeding up of workers.
(See Recent Economic Changes" Herbert
Hoover, chairman of reporting commssion).
How Massachusetts capitalists are increas-
ing exploitation of their employees is shown by
the state departments figures on capital in
vested" value added by manufacture" and
wages" over a period of fifteen years. In
1918 the ratio of ''value added by manufac-
ture" to capital invested was 50 per cent, by
1926 it had risen to 81 per cent. Meanwhile
the share of this value added by manufacture
going to workers in wages had dropped seven
per cent.
Ar important factor in the growing unem-
ployment situation in New England is the
trend of various industries of this section to
other parts of the country, especially to the
South and the failure of new and developing
industries to enter New England to any great
extent The shift of the cotton goods indus
try southwark has been rapid, the lower wages
and longer hours of southern mill hands offer
ing capitalists greater profits than they can
accumulate elsewhere. Solidarity of labor,
North and South, is the workers answer to
this scheme, and united front against the
bosses who exploit US both. Besides the in
roads on the standard of living of this section
of the American working class, due to part or
whole-tme unemployment, drastic cuts have
also been made in the earnings of those en-
ployed. The hourly rates in the textile in
dustry are one-fifth less than they were in
1920. Men averaged Sl9.2S cents a week and
women $15,75 in this industry in 1928. The
wages for men in other industries were some
what higher than in textiles. averaging around
$50 week. but various studies of cost OF
living and minimum budgets on whlch lam
lily of five can live show that working man
can barely manage to give the minimum es-
sentials to his family on these wages, provided
he is employed regularly, which of course he
is not Earnings of women workers are strik
ngly low. The average for the state is S17.37,
but the mass Of the women earn even less than
this amount, few better-paid groups offset
ting the bulk of lower-paid. Just how greatly
women are exploited in the Bay State, which
boasts of its minimum wage law for women,
and how the Minimum Wage Boards work in
the interest of the employers, is revealed by
these Boards decisions on minimum wages.
Here are some examples. Minimum wages for
inexperienced women workers, who have work
ed in the trade less than six to eighteen
months varying with the Industry. are So in
the millinery trade, 50 to $11 in bakery and
bread products, So and SO in canning and pre-
serving, 81 to $40 in mems clothing $3.50 in
knit goods, and S. to $40 in mems furnishings
and in muslin underwear Minimum wages for
experienced workers run around S13 to $3.50
(lo lie Couttaacdl