Show 0 RD IC L P scrubwomen SCRUB WOMEN one hot day when the business depression was worst I 1 visited two of the largest corporations in the world I 1 talked with the treasurer of one and with the chairman of the finance committee of the other and these are men I 1 may tell you in whose makeup make up sentimentality plays playa very little part they had been looking at red figures until their eyeballs eye balls burned they were entirely unwilling to predict when their industries would improve but each of them uttered the same fervent exclamation it if only we can pull through without having to cut wages when you stop to thina thant about it that is an astonishing phenomenon years ago men in similar positions would have said eald immediately business Is off ten per cent slash wages twenty per cent the same sort of executives who used to assume that the way to cure depression was by cutting wages are now convinced that the way to cure it Is not to cut that Is one principal tact fact which mak makes es i the current depression different from it predecessors that Is pro progress progresso gressl 1 history has bag a curious way of upsetting contemporary judgments many of the events which seem important to men and women while they are ara living prove insignificant in the eyes of the ages and some very little things later loom large who was king of spain in 1666 1 I do not remember but I 1 do recall that in 1666 an apple fell and hit isaac newton what was warren harding who were calvin coolidge and herbert hoover I 1 some future schoolboy school boy may lie be puzzled by those inquiries but unless I 1 am very much mistaken every future history book will lay emphasis on two developments which have taken place under our very eyes they will tell that a boy named lindbergh flew across the atlantic ocean and that a man named ford announced that he would pay all workers even scrubwomen scrub women a minimum of live five dollars a day the idea that high wages makes prosperity that the key to good business lies not in the sate safe deposit boxes ot of millionaires but Is carried in the pocket ot of every every worker this is something entirely new it holds the hope of the future whatever else may have to be discarded american business must not surrender that american ideal |