OCR Text |
Show oo GOOD WAGES MEAN j HEALTH FOR ALL ; CHICAGO. Dec. 9- Good wages generally gen-erally mean good health according to Arthur E. Holder, member of the fed-: fed-: eral board for vocational education. : The higher the wage the better would ,j be the health of the employe and the ; greater his output, he told the Ameri-J Ameri-J can Public Health association today In j an address in which ho advocated an . eight-hour day and increased wages. Mr. Holder proposed that the federal feder-al health agencies be concentrated into one department with a secretary at Its hand and that the secretary should : be a member of the president's cabl-: cabl-: net. Panics, said Mr. Holder, were brought about more by inequitable distribution dis-tribution of wealth than by any other cause. He quoted statistics to show j that in 1850 the wage earner obtained 23 cents of every dollar's worth of value he created, but that in 1910 he got only 16& cents. He, added: "Formerly, when the laborer got 23 cents in wages for each dollar of his product, panics occurred about once in twenty years, as witness 1837, 1S57. 1877. Since real wages shrunk to 1C cents on the dollar, panics roil around more frequently as the record shows 1SS1. 1891. 1907, 191 i. "Nothing influences our individual health more than severe changes in our economic life. During busy periods workers are literally rushed to death. During panicky periods, the workers and employers spend a large part of their energy fretting their lives away." "Since the union cigar makers ndopt-ed ndopt-ed the eight-hour day In 1SSG. from twelve to fifteen years have been added add-ed to the average life of the cigar-makers." cigar-makers." he added. "Similar experiences exper-iences have been recorded by other organized wage earners. Tho workers realize that health is their capitnl. To keep health or improve health means increased power to produce." The speaker then gave a labor program pro-gram for health and safety which included in-cluded the following provisions: 1 "Continued agitation for a shorter work day to a maximum pf eight hour3 for all manual toilers; demand for a higher minimum wage for all labor; release re-lease from work at least one full day in seven; elimination of the sweat shop system; enforcement of rigid child labor laws; abolition of night work by women and minors; equal pay for equal work regardless of sex." nn |