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

ACCEPTANCE OF NEW THEORY 12% that the Board would recognize the need of a basic living wage for the unskilled worker in the transportation industry, and would revise and reconstruct the entire wage scale for the railroads on this basis. Several months before the Board was organized, the Bituminous Coal Commission had not hesitated to adopt such a policy. It repudiated the cost-of- living theory of wage adjustments, accepted the living wage as the basis of readjusting wages in the soft-coal industry, and increased the wages of unskilled workers in and around the mines 97 per cent., altho the mine workers themselves only claimed that the cost of living had advanced 85 per cent. This was done in March, 1920, or about two months before this Board began its deliberations. On the other hand, when at the close of 1920 the tide of business and industrial activity turned—when expansion was succeeded by rapid and sudden contraction and by the falling off in railway traffic and income—and when in the early months of 1921 the railroad representatives, taking advantage of a slight decline in prices and especially of oversupply of labor because of unemployment, and especially a surplus of unskilled labor, asked the Board to reduce the rates of pay of all classes of railway employees, we relied upon the prin- ciple of the living wage for the unskilled worker as a “saving clause,” to resist the attacks of the railroads based on their conception of labor as a commodity whose price should be determined by the law of supply and demand. We contended at that time that the Board before giving ear to other considerations should determine whether or not the rates of pay of unskilled workers were sufficient to main- tain a life of decency and health. This consideration was urged as paramount to all others, in our opinion, and until the principle of a living wage for unskilled workers was met, other reasons for wage reductions based on declining prices or cost of living or lower wages in other industries, we claimed, could not be equitably entertained by the Board. Our conception of the status of the Board was, at that time, as it always has been, that it is a court of industrial

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