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 IX. Increased consumption and prospertity accepted as an outgrowth of lower costs and higher wages

Collection:: Economics Books

LOWER COSTS AND HIGHER WAGES 221 —even that was a big step. There was one more to take. Now more and more wages are regarded as labor's propor- tional share in the total product of wealth. It is not enough ‘hat wages shall be high. It is necessary that they shall be proportional, for if they are not, if the output of wealth in- creases faster than wages, then no matter how high wages may be, the relative buying power of labor will fall. This is ‘he view which comprehends the wage-earner primarily as a consumer, in which capacity has is indispensable to pros- perity. The great error of industry had been to see the wage- carner only as a producer. Not until it began to see him as a consumer was it possible for a new philosophy of division fo be 1tmagined. The equally great error of the wage-earner had been to see himself only as a consumer, and it was not until he began to see himself also as a producer that it was possible for any philosophy of progressive division to act. There was nothing for it to act upon. These two revolutions of thought have definitely occurred, and there is, for that reason, now the basis of a common anguage between capital and labor. . . . The classic economic dogma of antagonism is breaking down. We are privileged to witness that catastrophe, being the authors of it. Wages and profits are not opposed. Both derive from production. There is properly no conflict be- tween producer and consumer. How could there be? Pro- ducer and consumer are the same person. Prosperity is from increasing the sum of social wealth for purposes of propor- ional division, and all is supported by another’s part. One pursuing private gain in a ruthless manner as an exclusive end is a wild piper playing his own tune in a symphony and. He is not of our time and way of life. . . . A proportional wage for labor, a proportional wage for capital, and from the profits that are over, a distribution of benefits to the property, to the workers and to the public— that is management’s idea of division.

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