OCR Text |
Show LABOR THE BASIS OF ALL j NO discussion of the prices of commodities com-modities is complete unless it has as its basis a consideration of the labor supply. This country for more than a generation has depended on a natural increment of raw labor from Europe. During the years since 1900 this increment incre-ment rose to about a million a year. It was probably more than a 15 per cent addition to our labor supply from a source which operated like a perpetual fountain. With the beginning of the present war in the middle of 1914 this , supply was cut off. We did not notice it at once because the beginning of the war was accompanied by a sudden paralysis par-alysis of industrial activity in the United Uni-ted States. But with the industrial activity ac-tivity speeded up as it has been in recent re-cent months, 'the failure of this labor supply has been acutely felt. And more recently, of course, we have suffered another diminution in the quantity of human beings available for work, namely, name-ly, in the drawing off of hundreds of thousands of men for the army. Under such circumstances it is hard to prevent pre-vent the competition among industries for the diminishing supply of labor, and, in turn, hard to keep down the prices of commodities in which labor is an element to be considered. Collier's. |