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 IV. Post-war conflict and reconstruction

Collection:: Economics Books

CONFLICT AND RECONSTRUCTION 69 revivify and stimulate production and trade. Moreover, the union representatives declared that the earnings of workers in manufacturing and transportation at rates of pay then prevailing were inadequate from the standpoint of the physical and social well-being of employees, even on the basis of reduced living costs, and should be increased rather than decreased. The representatives of the unions further argued that the difficulties of the railroads were not due to high wages and, as a consequence, to high labor costs, for the reason that because of the increased productive efficiency of rail- way employees during recent years, labor costs per unit of traffic handled had actually declined. What the railroad really needed, it was asserted, was additional capital in order that their inadequacies in roadbed and equipment might be remedied, and their operating costs reduced. This much-needed capital, it was declared, should be furnished by the investment bankers and financiers, who were pri- marily responsible for the then existing financial plight of the railroads because of their practises in former years of over-capitalizing the companies or unwisely distributing their productive gains. Those in financial control of the transportation industry, it was concluded, wished to reduce wages, and thus secure a margin of net revenue as a basis for obtaining credit, when as a matter of sound policy they should secure credit and capital directly without attacking wages. By these economies and efficiencies, it was pointed out, railway management could make possible large revenue gains and at the same time maintain and even increase the rates of pay of employees. Finally, it was asserted that the Transportation Act had guaranteed a fair return to capital invested, and likewise a just and reasonable wage to labor, and inasmuch as the wages then paid to the great

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