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Show THE CITIZEN ARE WAGES TOO HIGH ? (By Basil M. Manly, director, Peoples Legislative Service, former joint rate of wages paid during the second half of the year, following the general Labor wage cut ordered by the railroad labor board, effective July 1, 1921. This wage cut averaged 12 per cent, ranging from 8 to 16 per cent for the various classes. This last set of figures represents the present rate of earnings, except that it fails to take into account the reduction in earning power, amounting to approximately $ 100, or about 862 per man, resulting from subsequent decisions of-- ' the board, abolishing overtime pay and other valuable rights which shop men, clerks and laborers have previously enjoyed, and from the practice of the a large part railroads of their work at low wages. The most striking things about this table are the actual buying power of present wages and the exposure of the miserable wages the railway men rer years. ceived in 1900 and other Think of it! The average earnings of all railway employees, high and low, in 1900 were only $567, or at the rate of less than 82.00 a day! The mere fact, then, that the buying power of railroad wages in 1921 was 832 higher than the starvation wages of 1900 cannot be used to prove the adequacy of present rates of pay. Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that these figures do not take account of the chairman, National War Board.) Railroad Wages and the Cost of Living We come now to the last great group of industrial workers the railroad ployees. They are the target for every special privilege propagandist, who at tributes to their alleged exorbitant wages every, ill, real and imaginary, from which, the world . is suffering. They are, according to these highly paid molders of public opinion, the cause of high freight rates, depression in foreign trade, 30 cent com, and every other curse that has fallen upon business men and farmers except, perhaps, the What are the facts about railroad boll-weevi- l. wages. The only statistics available on railway wages are those of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which are furnished by the railroads. These figures are subject to severe criticism, and from every standpoint are unfair to the. employees. Literally hundreds of pages of testimony were recently taken up by Dr. Frank J. Wame, an experienced statistician, in exposing before the senate committee on interstate commerce the fraudulent methods used by railroad officials in jugling wage statistics. 000,-00- sub-contracti- Here again we see the same situation that we have already found in other industries the only gains in real wages secured by those who were at the beginning of the century so badly underpaid that there was nowhere to go but up; while the better paid and more highly skilled have been steadily losing ground. The engineers, sometimes sneered at as the aristocrats of labor, are worse off by 8162, and conductors by 895.' Conclusions Confirmed, by Leading 0, ng pre-wa- Table VI. Earnings of All Railroad Employees. Buying Power Average Annual Earnings (Basis of Dollar Authorities. We have now completed a survey of wage statistics covering substantially all the workers employed in manufacturing, mining and transportation, and have found that, except in a few isolated trades and occupations, wages have failed to keep pace with the cost of living; and that substantially all American workers are therefore actually less well off than they were at the beginning of the century. This conclusion that wages in American industries have failed to keep pace with cost of living is corroborated and confirmed by a number of inde- pendent investigations, recently by economists and statisticians. The most recent of these is that of Dr. Abraham Epstein, Director, Pennsylvania Old Age Pension Commission, whose results are published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for September, 1921, unded the title Have American Wages Permitted an American Standard of Living? Dr. Epstein concludes after a painstaking examination of official data: The wage investigations discussed in the preceding pages are significant. It is patent that despite the tremendous increase in wages experienced during the last six years, only few classes of have succeeded in keeping pace with the increased cost of living. In the case of many workers, especially the skilled one3, the purchasing power of their inweek in creased wages for a 1920 was considerably less than it was r in the days. And if the great mass of owrkers, as was seen in the early part of this article, did not receive what is authoritatively considered an American living wage before the present advance in prices had begun, their standards at the present time are necessarily lower. An equally authoritative and unbiased study of The Movement of Real was made in 1921 Wages, by Dr. Paul H. Douglas' and Frances Lamberson, bringing down to that date the elaborate statistics compiled ' by Dr. I. M. Rubinow in December, 1914; An article summarizing the facts developed by this iqvestigation is published in the American Economic Review, the Official journal of the American Economic Association, for September, 1921. After a careful survey covering ten industries from 1890 to 1918, they concluded: 1. The purchasing power of an hour's wages was 20.7 per cent less in . con-dutce- wage-earne- rs full-tim- e pre-wa- The first set of figures shown under 1921 in ! Table VI represents tfee amount that would have been earned during a full year at the rate of wages paid during the first half of the year. The second set of figures under 1921 represents the amount which would have been earned in a full year at the of all railroad employees today have no greater buying power are of no more real value than the miserly wages paid in 1900. This stands but even more clearly when we consider the buying power of wages in the principal occupations as shown in Table VII. - TABLE VII. Buying Power (In Dollars) of Average Annual Earning of Railroad Employees. (Basis of Purchasing Power of the Dollar in 1900) . 1890-191- 8, , d 1918 than it had been during , 1890-99- ; The purchasfrg power time weekly earnings in per cent less than in the 2. 1890-9- 9. This great decrease wai trated almost wholly in tw0 , (a) the years (b) 3. 1907-12- 1916-1- 7 Do American Workers Ears Wages? demonstration After this real value of wages today fo it was ten or twenty yean seems hardly worth while to wages by any of the other its but for the sake of compl in order to remove any qm regard to the few cases in w have advanced faster than ing, it is worth while to briefly whether American living wages. We may, without detailed tion, pass over the clearly ini wages in manufacturing ial which had an average buying j only 8420 in 1919 as comps 8426 in 1900. It is importu ever, to note in passing the in the steel industry, about il general public has been so gn ceived. These facts are the illuminating report of tl church World Movement on Strike of 1919. This report, the period when the buying! steel workers' wages was at est point and when they vert excessive hours, concluded: The annual earnings of third of all productive iron workers were, and had been below the level set by the experts as the minimum of standard for families of fiv& The annual earnings of of all workers were, and had years, below the level set ment experts as the minimum fort level for families of flvt This second standard lowest which scientists are term an American standard cq I I o 71 Iff te u it follows that nearly thre the steel workers could enough for an American unsi living. The bulk of labor earned less than enouD average family? semi-sence; the bulk of fiff earned less than enough court age family's minimum Since this report was hart wages of. steel workers 40 per cent. k . 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