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Show THE CITIZEN ARE WAGES TOO HIGH ? (By Basil M, Manly, director, Peo- ples Legislative Service, former joint chairman, National War Labor Board.) - Wages in Manufacturing Industries. Let us first take a broad view, covering the last twenty years, of the wage movement of the largest group of employees for which figures are available the wage earners in manufacturing industries. These factory workers in 1919 numbered 9,098,119, and with their dependents constituted more than one-thir-d of the entire population. The United States census every five years secures from the factory payrolls figures covering wages and number of employees from every manufacturing establishment in the United States. The following table is calculated from those figures. . TABLE I. Real Value of Wages in Manufacturing 1899 1904 1909 1914 1919 Industries. Actual Average Pchsing Power Earnings per on Basis of Employee per Yr. Dollars of 1900 $ 426 477 518 579 1,159 $426 426 395 383 420 This table shows that while the average earnings of factory workers had increased during the 20 years from $426 to $1,159, nevertheless that $1,159 in 1919 would buy only as much of the necessaries of life food, rent, fuel and clothing as $420 would buy in 1899. The real value of the factory workers earnings, therefore, decreased during this 20 years from $426 in 1899 to $420 in 1919. The wage earner was, therefore, Worse off at the end of the war, when nominal wages were at their peak, than at the end of the last century. Objection may be made that since 1919 cost of living has declined; but the answer is clear so also have wages and the opportunity to get work. Whatever decline occurred in the cost of living during the first half of 1921 has already ceased. Moreover, we are here considering annual earnings, and with millions of workers unemployed and the balance on part time at greatly reduced wages, it is absolutely certain that their earnings in 1921 will fall far short of 1919. Great Private Fortunes Built on Under- paid Workers. We may also view ' this situation from another point of view and determine what the factory workers wages should have been to maintain the Bame standard of living they enjoyed (or suf fered under) at the beginning of the century. For example, the cost of living increased 176 per cent during the 20 years from. 1899 to 1919, so that if earnings increased in the same proportion in 1919, they would have been 176 per cent higher than in 1899, or $1,176. As they actually received only $1,159, each worker had a deficit of $17. For the 9,098,119 wage earners in manufacturing industries this deficit amounted in 1919' to the enormous sum of $154,668,023. Using the same methods for other years, the following table is calcu. lated. . , . - TABLE II. Underpaid. p1 o P 3P. rj P n E- CO w c 22 HO 2.2p 1? o oq p oVff Up P p WE! S fei is r H2 po P Chicago-Blacksm- iths 5 O . 0 i H -- 57. o E. - . Amount Factory Workers Have Been M! United States, over and above that important trades with the consumed, wasted and worn out, is would have been necessar? not less than $8,000,000,000. The figtain the same purchasing W ures in Table II show us the source aiZ. of a part of this surplus. It is obtainTABLE IV ed by paying the workers so little that they cannot maintain even the Union Wages. miserable standard of living prevalent Building Trades New y0P in our factory slums twenty years ago. Union Wages and Cost of Living. It may be said, however, that the charges that wages are too high have not been directed against the great unorganized mass of factory workers, but have been aimed specifically at organized labor and union wages. Such an assertion may be challenged with quotations of declarations from every quarter that the wages of all workers were pushed up to unconscionable heights during the war and that labor must now be deflated. $55.00 ta Without tsopping to argue this point Bricklayers $30.80 27.50 49.50 5,g Carpenters let us look at the facts regarding union Hod wages. The United States Bureau of Carrier 16.50 38.50 k Labor statistics has. compiled every 22.00 45.00 ft Painters year since 1917 the wage scales actual30.25 55.00 61 Plasterers ly paid union workers in the principal Plumbers 30.25 49.50 ft organized trades. These are not theoIron Struct. retical earnings but are the wages 27.50 49.50 Workers actually embodied in the contracts beMetal Trades tween the employers and the unions. 48.40 k This report shows the wages agreed Boilermakers .21.38 21.60 39.96 upon in each occupation in every im21.06 44.00 k Machinists portant industrial center. On the' Molders, Iron 24.00 50.40 ft basis of these figures the Bureau also Ptg & Pub- - N. Y. calculates an official index of union wages, which shows exactly how the Compositors Bk. & Job 24.00 45.00 average wages of all union employees in any year compares with other, yeans. Compositors Day Work, NewsThe trades covered by this union 30.00 55.00 ft! paper wage index include bakers, building trades, metal trades, printing trades, teamsters, laundry workers, and waitIn ten out of the thirteei ers. These unions have about 2,000,-00- 0 listed above, in the highest i members and are representative of tricts in the country, the all organized labor, outside of transin 1920 were less than so be which will maintain the standard of portation and mining, considered hereafter. amounts ranging as high as Using the bureaus index of weekly week. In only three of the wages of union workers and also its official cost of living figures, we may wages greater than necessary! construct the following table which tain the 1913 standard, the shows the buying power of union excess being $4.01 per red wages since 1907. cents per day. 0 , W 1 Pi o P 1 . This table indicates, that the wage earners in manufacturing indusrties in the United States have during the last ten years been grossly underpaid by amounts ranging as high as $440,000,-00- 0 a year. Taking the five years shown in the table together, and counting the good years with the bad, we have an average annual deficit of $27 per employee. Assuming, that the 5 years shown are typical, the aggregate underpayment of all employees for the 20 years amounts to the colossal sum of $3,556,-000,00- j (To be TABLE III. All Union Trades. -- continued.) ANTICLINAL 0. .This three and a half billion dollars of wages, withheld from the factory workers during the last twenty years, has been the basis of thousands of the great American fortunes. Dr. David Friday, a noted economist, . STRUCTUI The ideal form of oilbe or set of beds is dome. basin or a set of basins turned aim down, but in many places ing is sufficient to afford of structural features as a P .ground for oil. Some terrace the dip or inclination of a accumulate terrupted by the mod such as is considered vorable. for a flattening lib h a terrace, beyond which the otte has recently demonstrated that the surplus wealth created annually in the & slopes downward at the The best place to pro in a region where it is the ist, in a place where & anticlinal stnicture-th- at beds are bowed vpwardM or, as it is caller by geol0 ticline. An anti me mayP detected by an u- t he is very likely to ture of the beds "ith thejj This table shows that while union wages were more than twice as high in 1921 as in 1907, this was mre than offset by the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar to 45 cents, so that the real value of union wages in 1921 was only 94 per cent of the wages round, paid in 1907. Furthermore, the apparent rise in 1921, caused by the sharp surface of the parts decline in the cost of living, is all an misled. In some illusion. .With the decline in prices States even a c: efully. came unemployment, and the man out gist, of large exp ience of a job has little interest in the purto locate antic- ms chasing power of wages which he has no opportunity to earn. painstaking wot This decline in the real value of struments. .Inimyra union wages is even more ..clearly that form the a hes or shown in Table IV., which compares format!. s can ..bearing wages in 1920, the last year for which of the details are available, for the most ered in advance . - -- . . til |