The new industrial revolution and wages

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804651486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-193069

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Lauck, William Jett http://d-nb.info/gnd/173237126

Title:: The new industrial revolution and wages

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Funk & Wagnalls

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: ix, 308 S.; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VII. Acceptance of the theory of an adequate basic wage

Collection:: Economics Books

122 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES would inevitably be raised. This is what actually hap- pened, and during the past five years budgetary studies of minimum family requirements have generally included an allowance of at least 10 per cent. of the total for savings to protect the wage-earner and his family against the ordi- nary contingencies of life. Quite recently a further upward impetus has been given to the basic wage conception by the striking declaration of the head of one of our largest industrial corporations. He gave expression to the opinion that the worker’s income should be sufficient to provide for a proper “cultural life” and not merely for his physical needs. Furthermore, he expressed the hope that some day labor would become capital, or, in other words, that our great business and industrial undertakings would be owned by those who, in whatever capacity employed, gave to them their best efforts and their lives. The industrialist who put forward this unusual point of view was Mr. Owen D. Young, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the General Electric Company. In the course of an address on industrial relations and conditions delivered at Harvard University on June 4, 1927, which was widely commented upon, he developed his point of view as to an adequate wage standard as follows:? Gradually we are reducing the area of conflict between the iwo. Slowly we are learning that low wages for labor do not necessarily mean high profits for capital. We are learn- ing that an increasing wage level is wholly consistent with a diminishing commodity-price level. We are learning that productivity of labor is not measured alone by the hours of work, nor even by the test of physical fatigue in a particular job. What we need to deal with are not the limits to which men may go without physical exhaustion, but the limits within 1 Monthly Labor Review, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, November, 1927, pp. 45-48; see also Forbes Magazine for Dec, 1, 1927, p. 9.

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The new industrial revolution and wages

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation