Toledo union journal. [volume] (Toledo, Ohio) 1942-current, 1950-10-06
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Initiation: Full Of Times-Type Gas

because # is possible, under mass production, TO consolidate
operations. eliminate waste. utilize space, time, material and
planning to make q maximum number of individual parts, aimed
toward a total product. in minimum amount of fine.
But no manufacturer is going to make Two million PIyn-
ouths until he is pretty certain that he can sell these two million
Pymouths.
It takes not only Two million people TO buy them; II takes a
market many times bigger than that-for somebody is going
to be in there trying TO sell two million Chevrolets. two million
Studebakers, and so on.
II takes a mass MARKET TO make mass PRODUCTION
possible.
A mass market is not merely a mass of people.
One Of the largest masses Of people anywhere is in China.
It is quite likely that a tremendous yen for shiny new PIymouths
might be developed in China. The Chinese might be wiling TO
own Piymouths. and willing TO pay for Them. But they haven't the
money SO 400, 5000 Chinese Just don't constitute q mass
market for Pymouths at all.
Neither did the American workineman nor the American
farmer constitute a mass market in the I930s-in the days OF
the Republican depression.
Because The overwhelmingly largest group in America
could not buy, industry could not function and it did not
function.
Franklin DeIano Roosevelt attacked The disease at the
source. He pushed legislation which got money and credit into
the hands OF the w%orkingmen and the farmers. He backed the
Wagner Act, helping labor TO organize the mass industries, and
intensity its organization everywhere; and he backed farm subs-
dies protecting the farmer against foreclosure, against the
bankruptcy Of unpurehasabIe surplus and aeanst the hazards
Of his profession.
The mass market came alive - people began to buy
and industry TO manufacture.
And manufacturing to a mass market. with its attendant
economy, gave the nation more goods, better goods. at lower
prices.
As wages rose, The price OF goods dropped.
Not the price tags. The price per unit Of quality.
The fact that # costs more today TO buy a Plymouth than
it did ten or fifteen years ago does not mean that the price OF
Pymou+hs is inflated" Anyone who drives q Car knows that
he's getting vastly more car per dollar than he did in the days
Of the Knocked up Maxwell.
To see that, it is necessary only to look at the other side
Of The coin. The PRICE Of white broadcIoth shirts. Of ordinary
shoes, did not climb very high under price controls during the
war and yet there was a serious infla+on in shirts and shoes.
You paid more for shirts - and you got no tails, no peck.
cts. brittle buttons. bad workmanship. cheap and sleazy ma
+erial. The shoes cost more, and were cardboard. So the mat.
ter OF content OF quaEty-is q factor in value, too. It is a
factor in any discussion OF initiation.
Simple common sense will show that as wages have risen.
better and better quality has been available TO more and more
people and this quality has been overtakne price year by
year.
Mass production, then. permits the manufacture. effei.
emily and at a lower cost. OF much better merchandise, even
though wage rates rise. And the only thing which supports this
mass production is high wages high wages paid TO more and
more of the people.
+oral writer does that "ALL wage boosts are infa+onary" as
it is to say that all editorial writer's are economic t~roslodytes.
Some of them seem to have attained the intelligence level OF
really bright high school sophomores.
II is TOO bad that they so often permit their venom and
their i'll tempers TO lead them into error and to try to per-
suade newspaper readers Of the virtue of these errors.
It may even be that they start out knowing what they're
talking about. but spend so much time reading each others
blee that they forget what they learned.
However this may be. all wage boosts are NOT initiation
ary- and don't let anybody tell you different.