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 movement
 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 consequent
 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 manifesting
 his confidence in the underlying factors of business.


But if consumer purchasing power were the desideratum,
 some method had to be devised for stimulating
 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