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Show THE CITIZEN 6 ARE WAGES TOO HIGH ? (By Basil M. Manly director, Peoples ' fixed by the National Industrial ConLegislative Service, former joint ference Board, a manufacturers orWar Labor ganization, as the minimum necessary chairman. National for the maintenance of a wage earnBoard.) Building Trade Earnings Below Fair ers family in Lawrence, Mass., a Standard. much smaller city. It is more than A general impression exists, found$600 below the Health and Comfort ed largely on jokes in the comic supBudget prepared after most extensive plements and on the vaudeville stage, investigation, by the U. S. Bureau of that the bricklayers, the plumber and Labor Statistics. Not one of these trades the highest the carpenter are grossly overpaid and that their incomes are in the super paid in the industry earned enough tax class. It is as false as are the othin 1920 to support a wife and three er impressions which we have seen small children on even the bare basis shattered by official statistics, A brief of subsistence fixed by the experts examination of the facts will demon- of - the employers association. These strate the. source of the error. families were either underfed or clothed, or the deficit in the faWe fortunattely have a splendid basis for this study in an investigation thers earnings had to be made up by recently completed by the Structural the labor of the wife or children or by Service Bureau of Philadelphia, a con- taking in boarders. tractors organization, which certainly The deficit below a living wage here cannot be accused of any undue bias in shown lends force to Secretary Hoovfavor of union workers. This Bureau ers statement that in the building conducted a careful investigation to trades one of the reasons for the condetermine how many days the men in stant drive for higher hourly wages is the building trades could have worked to' maintain an adequate annual inin Philadelphia during 1920 if they come and to offset the loss due to inhad been on the job whenever weather termittent occupation. It also throws permitted and there was work to be light on the situation, deplored by done, assuming that every man had Senator Calder, a builder of great exaverage luck in securing employment. perience, as chairman of the Senate No deduction whatever was made for Committee on Reconstruction that American-bor- n time lost through labor troubles, young men are no lonstrikes or lockouts. ger entering apprenticeships and learnThe calculation of annual earnings ing construction trades from the botof the various trades was made by. the tom up, with a view to spending their lives in such work. U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BulCoal Miners and the Living Wage. letin, Oct., 1921, p. 100) on the basis There is no industry with regard to of the wage rates published by the National Association of Builders Ex- which such wild ideas prevail as coal mining. The mines are located outchanges. side the centers of population, and TABLE VIII. hence most people have no conception Comparison of Earnings in Philadelof the nature of the work and its charphia Building Trades and Living acteristic features and hazards, and Wage" 1920. are ready to believe anything they may Living Wage hear or read about it. As fixed by Philadelphia BuThe outstanding feature of the inreau of Municipal Research $1,992 As fixed by National Industrial dustry, due primarily to the development of an excessive number of mines,, Conference Board, an Emis its extreme irregularity of operation ........$1,832 ployers Association under-- ceeded 100 working days. The smallest loss occurred in 1918, the year of record production, yet even during that year the mines were closed down for one cause or another for the equivalent of 59 days out of 308 nearly one-fift- h of the time. For this reason all statements relating to the mining industry which are based simply on daily or hourly wages are misleading. Apply these conditions, in which work is available only s of the time, to your own weekly or monthly income and you will appreciate the situation that confronts two-third- the miners. For this reason, also, there are no really adequate wage statistics covering the mining industry. The labor involved in compiling information covering an entire year for even a representative group is too great. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, in December, 1919, published the results of a very compre hensive survey of miners made during the earlier year which throw a flood of the subject. They found that the period covered the averaj ings of all employees in the nous mines were at the rate for a full year. The pick mix highly skilled men, earned onh This is one of the most hazard cupations in the whole field try, so hazardous that its n are either refused altogether by life insurance companies or ed only oh payments of premj 16 years above their actual ag highest paid group were the i miners, who earned at the rate 626 for a full year. These n miners must combine skill and ence with exceptional strength ed to handle the heavy t chines. At the bottom of thi among the adult employees w laborers earning $1,008 for fu Deficit Helow. Mving Wttjye. - tril o ert o (0 1 &l or ic rrs i c tk i T coal-cut- & ll ii 11 it id n N ii s a oi Its Value Is Incalculable i i ii of Telephone Service can THE bevalue expressed in terms of cost to the user. Its measure runs outside and beyond dollars and cents. The hurried call for the doctor, the nurse, for aid of any nature, may cost a few cents, but the value of the call may be incalculable. It is difficult to think of any of the nece- life that costs so little in proportion to its actual value as does Telephone Service. ssities of present-da- y In every department of life u F e business, domestic or social Telephone Service has become an indispensable factor. efficient arid economical management, enabled, to render service satisfactory the public. . o. a With adequate moral and financial support, the Telephone Company, through We and consequent unemployment. have, says Dr. George. Otis Smith, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, an excess mine capacity of at least 150,000,000 tons. . . . During the last thirty years, out of 308 possible working days a year, the bituminous' mines of the country were idle on the average 93 days. Ten times during that period the time lost ex it o Telephone Service can be as effective and as adequate as the public demands only when the public and the Telephone Company :are in harmony and united in cooperative effort. The budget used as a basis for the living wage is the Workingmens Standard of Living in Philadelphia, prepared after careful investigation by. the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research. For the year 1920 it ainounted to $1,992 as the sum necessary to support a family of average : size on a minimum comfort level. This is only $160 more than the amount nil i 4 - tati is to Wi Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co. |