OCR Text |
Show HIGH PRICES It is now generally admitted that in the United States we are living in ah era of high wages and general prosperity. But the calamity cal-amity howlers like to counter all references to the good times our working men are enjoying by stating that even if wages are higher the cost of living is rising just as fast and that the worker is therefore no better off than he was fifteen years ago . The economists who advocate the high wage system and the protective tariff system as the way to promote a nations economic welfare say that even so the high wage system is better for the reason that first of all the American worker is a producer rather than a consumer con-sumer in the final analysis and that he is therefore better able to lay away an extra dollar for the rainy day in times of high wages, high prices and steady employment, than he is in low wages, low prices and unstable employment. But it would seem now that even this last alibi of the increasing cost of living is to be taken away from the pessimists . For according accor-ding to the National Conference Board which has made an exhaustive exhaust-ive study of the situation while wages and costs are high the family income has increased faster than the cost of living since 1914, and will therefore go one third farther in providing for the family than it would in the alleged good old .days before the war. Here is something to think about, and it bears some assurance for the future. As a matter of fact the purchasing power of the dollar has increased during the past two years. It now buys 61.1 - percent as it did in I 9 1 4, as compared with fifty per cent only a few years ago. But that is only half the story. The weekly earnings earn-ings of wage workers, because of higher wages and steadier employment employ-ment are more than twice as high as they were' in 191 4, so that the average worker even with the higher cost of Living can buy a third more than he could in 1914. And the purchasing power of his j wages is increasing and not decreasing. Here is the best answer possible to th'2 low tariff, low wage, i and low cost of living advocates. Again it may be said that the proof of the pudding is the eating thereof. |