26 ~~ The Stock Market Crash—And After 
“This may be done in two ways: first, by putting 
additional value into goods or reducing prices to the 
level of actual values, and, second, starting a move- 
ment to increase the general wage level. Nearly 
everything in this country is too high priced. The 
only thing that should be high priced in this country 
is the man who works. Wages must not come down, 
they must not even stay on their present level; they 
must go up.” 
It may or may not be true that all goods at a 
given time are too high priced—probably it is not 
true; it may not be true that prices should be reduced, 
until costs are reduced; but it is true that the cost of 
production should be reduced all the time, with con- 
sequent enhancement of profits and of consumer 
income. It may be added that Mr. Ford “made 
good” upon his words by reducing the prices of his 
product to the public and increasing the wages of his 
employees, thus at once showing what might be done 
by the leader of our greatest industry and manifest- 
ing his confidence in the underlying factors of busi- 
ness. 
But if consumer purchasing power were the desid- 
eratum, some method had to be devised for stimu- 
lating payments to workers by industries both in 
large-scale and small-scale production. Not all of 
these industries were in the fortunate circumstances 
of Mr. Ford’s, which had benefited by intensive 
economies and consequent rapid reduction of unit 
costs. The problem was to benefit the wage earners 
in the whole gamut of American industries, big and