Montana labor news., 1934-11-08
Harriman's Sophistries.

Business leaders who have so mismanaged in
dustry as to create a permanent unemployed
army of over 100000 persons exhibit an amaz-
ing inability to face economic problems in a ra-
tional manner and bungle matters still more by
trumping up sophistries so transparent that a
kindergarten child should have little trouble ex-
posing them.
Henry L. Hartman, president of the Chamber
of Commerce of the United States, strikingly
reveals these characteristics in a debate in the
New York Times on the 30-hour week with Viii
liam Green president of the American Federation
of Labor.
He declares that this decrease in the length of
the work week applied to all industries without
reduction in weekly earnings for those now en-
ployed and with the same wages for the re-
employed would result in a lower standard of
living due to decreased output of the good things
of life.
The American Federation of Labor's 30-hour
week proposal does not vision decreased output
No one knows this better than Mr.. Hartman
himself. According to reliable estimates there
we're 39,387,O0O persons at work in the United
States in September. A Is per cent reduction in
their hours of work per week would provide jobs
for 9,841,7 $50 of the unemployed. 1t doesn't re-
quire a Mathematician to ascertain that 49,2OS,-
$50 men and women working, say, 80 hours per
week would normally produce as much commod-
tiles as 39,367,O00 working 40 hours per week.
Inasmuch as the 39,367,0 900 would receive as
much wages for the 30-hour week as for the 40
hour week, their standard of living would GER
tainly not be reduced. 1t is, moreover, evident
that the living standards Of the 9,841, $50 unem-
ployed put to work would increase to the extent
that their wages exceeded the amounts they
were allotted by relief agencies.
Mr.. Harriman's second s%ophistry is found in
his conclusion that in some industries a 80 per
cent reduction in the length of the work week
would not absorb all the jobless in those indus
tries while the same reduction in other industries
would result in there not being enough trained
workers to supply the needs of employers.
These discrepancies, he claims, would require
mass shifting of workers from one industry or
plant to another, which, temporarily at least,
would mean decreased output due to unskilled
labor.
There is nothing new in the shifting of surplus
workers from one industry to another. During
the halycon days of maximum profit-making
which ended in 1929, the anarchistic industrial
leaders who managed American industry intro
duced labor-displacing machinery on such a rev.
dictionary scale that hundreds of thousands of
employees were deprived of work for which they
were highly qualified through years of practice
and compelled to shift to other work about
which they knew nothing. In fact, the favorite
argument of the economic lightweights who
maintained that machinery did not really cause
unemployment was the claim that those whose
places were taken by machinery were thus ere
leased for other industries whose owners could
profitably employ them.
This shifting was done without planning.
Now we are confronted with a problem-the
shorter work week-which requires planning.
We have a Federal Government ready and will
ing to cooperate with the owners of industry to
determine just how many workers are required
to operate our plants for a specified output. Ii
there is a surplus of workers in any industry,
they must, of course, be allocated to other indus
tries and given adequate training to fit them for
their new work. If there is a scarcity of