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Updated: June 6, 2025
A compromise would make allowance, firstly; for the fact that in times of rising prices, those groups whose wages are lowest cannot meet the rise in the cost of living by changing their consumption habits as easily as can the more fortunately placed groups, and secondly; in times of rising prices, the movements of the wage earners from industry, or from occupation to occupation are governed, within limits, by calculations of the absolute change in the wages paid for different kinds of labor, rather than by calculations of relative change.
Moreover, the capitalist or modern slave-owner has been forced by his very success, as we have seen, to organize his slaves, the wage- earners, into a co-operation for production so well arranged that it requires little but his own elimination to make it a foundation for communal life: in the teeth also of the experience of past ages, he has been compelled to allow a modicum of education to the propertyless, and has not even been able to deprive them wholly of political rights; his own advance in wealth and power has bred for him the very enemy who is doomed to make an end of him.
If, therefore, we penalise the Rentier too severely we shall discourage his future creation; the present race of earners, if they see that those who are living on past savings are shorn too close will be deterred from saving, will put their surplus earnings into extravagant spending instead of into plant and equipment, and the economic future of the nation, and of the world, will be pro tanto less hopeful.
In the following chapters a study was made of the causes of the formation and existence of relatively separate groups of wage earners, and of the forces which determine the level of earnings for the various groups. It was observed that the lowest paid groups of wage earners tended to be separated from the more fortunate groups; they have relatively independent economic fortunes.
We are now in the midst of a struggle brought about by the efforts of the wage earners to add to their traditional rights of freedom of contract and of enterprise certain other rights. These may be collectively described as the right to organize and to use their organized strength collectively in all ways which may be reconciled with the public interest.
For the present we should continue in possession of this property which we hold as security for the settlement of claims due to our people and our Government. While not enough time has elapsed to afford a conclusive demonstration, such results as have been secured indicate that our immigration law is on the whole beneficial. It is undoubtedly a protection to the wage earners of this country.
The ratio of percentage war wages of timeworkers, pieceworkers and pressers respectively, shall for all index figures, be the same as that shown for index figures, exceeding 107." "Cost of Living and Wages," F. W. Taussig, Collier's Weekly, Sept. 27, 1919. Section 1. Why there must be in industry an ordered scheme of wage relationship between each and every group of wage earners.
Such increases are beneficial, for they provide wage earners with greater purchasing power. Except where necessary to correct obvious injustices, wage increases that outrun productivity, however, are an inflationary factor. They make for higher prices for the public generally and impose a particular hardship on those whose welfare depends on the purchasing power of retirement income and savings.
On the other hand it was pointed out that a small number of persons who were responsible to nobody could dominate the fortunes of hundreds of thousands of wage earners, manipulate production, make or break a region or a rival, bring about financial crises and, in a controversy or for private gain, use a great industry or a railroad as a weapon and wreck it regardless of the welfare of the public at large.
A better distribution would have a dynamic significance in wealth production, if the actual increase which labor secured in wages and leisure were a real increase. But exploiting capital provides for such exigencies as high wages by increasing the price of products, thus reducing the wage earners' purchasing power to the former level.
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