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Show BUYING PUBLIC HAS THE FINAL SAY The American consumer is the man with the biggest hiceps in our free economy and when labor, capital or management force prices too high commodities or services don't sellnnd Loth men and machines are unemployed. This obvious truth is sometimes overlooked in times like today wlien prices are high, and some are being forced higher. There are, however, signs that Mr. Consumer knows his strength and is beginning to show his muscles. Hanford Main, president of the coast-to-coast opera-lion opera-lion which is Sunshine Biscuits, had the consumer very much in mind in a recent statement pin-pointing "What Makes Wages," he pointed out: . "Neither labor as such, nor capital as such, nor management man-agement as such is wanted for itself alone, adding, labor, capital and management together are wanted; that is, they have value, because jointly they team up to produce commodities com-modities and services which the people need, and for which people are willing to pay a price." All forms of compensations-wages, interest and profitsdepend prof-itsdepend on production, Mr. Main declared, and are simply shares of income resulting when people buy commodities com-modities or services produced by workers, capital and managers. man-agers. "In a free economy," he concluded, "where the people have a choice of how they will spend their money, the people peo-ple will be the final judges of values. Unless we are able to maintain a proper balance between the cost of each factor fac-tor and the price of -the final product, we will have overpriced' over-priced' costs, sales will drop, and the value of at least a part of the services will be unemployed. They will simply have priced themselves out of the mar ket.' Part of the job of management is to maintain that proper balance and avoid unemployment for men or machines." i In other words, the role of the buying public in a free economy is that of final judge of the wages to be paid to capital, management and labor. |
