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 XI. Constructive remedies needed

Collection:: Economics Books

242 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES When these new industries reach the point of saturation a very serious problem of continual displacement of men through the use of improved machinery must be construc- tively met and settled. In commenting on an article by Professor Sumner H. Slichter of Cornell University, in which he declared that increasing unemployment would be the price of our out- standing industrial progress unless remedial measures were inaugurated, The New Republic stated editorially in its issue of February 8, 1928: Mr. Slichter believes, and so do we, that a good deal of the unemployment now in evidence is due, not to the cyclical alteration of boom and depression, but to changing methods and increasing productivity in industry, whereby more goods can be turned out by fewer men. Classical economics teaches that such advances in productivity help the workers them- selves (in the long run) by increasing the general stock of goods per capita. On this basis economists and employers have lectured labor for its occasional opposition to improved machinery and better devices, and have welcomed labor’s new favorable attitude to increased efficiency. But how long will this welcome conversion endure if (in the short run, which may continue for years) the better living standards of others are purchased at the cost of deplorable privation on the part of millions thrown out of work? A far-seeing industrial leadership would in its own interest give concen- trated attention to this problem. When more goods are produced by fewer men, what will suffice to give employment to the men dispensed with? It had thus been realized on all sides—by executives and by the great multitude of workers directly affected, as well as by students, social workers, ‘economists, and pub- licists—that in the rapid development of the new order of industrial efficiency, tremendous forces for good had been established, but unless these forces were kept going at

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