The new industrial revolution and wages

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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

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

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

Collection:: Economics Books

138 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES tices, farm laborers, servants, professional persons, members of United States Army and Navy, criminals, idlers, and inmates of public institutions, and the unemployed—there would remain only 17,423,077 persons to whom the living-wage principle would be applicable. Estimating the amount necessary to main- tain a living-wage standard according to the budget of health and comfort issued by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1919, and increasing each unskilled worker to the amount his earnings fall below this figure, and also adding a similar amount to the earn- ings of those in the higher grades of occupations so that existing differentials in rates of pay would be maintained, it was estimated would add from 22 to 34 per cent. or from $7,400,000,000 to $11,370,000,000, to the national wage bill, according to 1922 conditions and the extent to which the living wage was applied. As the total amount paid in wages in 1918, according to the Bureau of Economic Research, was 33 billion dollars and the total national income was 61 billions, it was concluded that the national income was suffi- cient to stand a practical application of the living wage without increasing prices or unduly decreasing capital returns. The economic result of applying the living-wage principle, or, in other words, of increasing the national wage bill from 22 to 34 per cent. it was further claimed, would not be a dead weight on industry, but would be absorbed by other balancing factors; part of the expense might be paid out of excess profits, or the entire expense might be offset by the increased efficiency of labor and management in reducing costs of production and eliminating waste. It was not logi- cal, it was contended, to assume the indefinite continu-

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