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Show THE AMERICAN WAY ARE THEY STILL KIDDING US ny George rvk V i : I r (Editor's Note: Alfred P. Haake, Ph. D., mayor of Park Ridge, 111., is a noted Economist, Business Consultant, Lecturer and Author) In the Fall of 1945 the U. S. Dept. of Commerce issued a dishonest dis-honest report Which claimed that industry could raise wages 25 without raising prices and without with-out hurting profits. After a terribly costly and unnecessary un-necessary strike in the automobile industry, Secy. Wallace, in effect, repudiated that report, saying it was not intended to be used as a basis for predicating wages, pric- ' es and profits. But, he waited until un-til the false report had done its work of misleading thousands of workers into a costly strike, 'before he published the truth about the report. Thousand of workers lost savings sav-ings which they might just as well have kept and which are now lost forever because the rise in living costs has 'taken away the major portion of their wage increases. Reconversion was needlessly set back and thousands of new and better jobs postponed to a later day. Now comes another report, this time th so-called "Nathan" report, financed by .the CIO, which is strangely like the report of a year ago. It is built on the same general fallacy that wages and standard of living can both .be increased merely by paying out more money mon-ey in wages without producing more goods for each dollar of money. mon-ey. So long as men believe that nonsense we shall continue the spiral of rising inflation and lowering low-ering standards of living. The Nathan report, if really understood un-derstood and correctly explained, actually shows that union labor is already overpaid. The report compares com-pares total wages and total profits, pro-fits, and claims that, total profits have gone up more than total wages, wag-es, and, therefore, the wages can now be raised without raising prices pric-es or destroying profits. But, the truth is .that we cannot compare totals to prove anything about the parts of which they are made up. Thus, while it may be true that total wages in all business and industry in-dustry have gone up less than have the total profits, the important import-ant truth is that in those particular particu-lar industries in which 'the CIO workers are employed, wages have gone up more than have profits. What the CIO Nathan report shows for ALL industry 'and business, is exactly the opposite of what is true for that part of industry in which .the CIO is seeking to use the Nathan report for 'another wage squeeze. v When the Nathan report is really made clear it proves that union labor is already over-paid as compared com-pared to unorganized labor. Mes-sers. Mes-sers. Murray et all are really trying try-ing to exploit unorganized work-rs work-rs in order to get a still larger share of the total worker income for their own members. ' If all industry did what the CIO is trying to do again, we would learn quickly that the only way we can really raise Wages is first to raise the productivity of the worker. That was made very clear toy the A. F. of L. ih its bulletin bul-letin to members last July. How silly to .think we can have more without producing more. But that is what certain labor leaders are trying to make their followers believe. And those leaders are now in the terrible position of not daring dar-ing to tell the truth, because with the telling of the truth now they may 'be discovered to have been lying yesterday. And then the deceived de-ceived workers may begin to wonder won-der if they can trust their leaders even today. Labor is too important and already al-ready carries too heavy a burden of debt and taxes to toe punished further with the indignity of being be-ing used as a stepping stone by labor leaders labor leaders who use their powerful monopoly control con-trol of union labor to make them- selves the dictators of America. |