274 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

more successful policy. As a matter of historical comparison
 and economic evolution, therefore, one of the most
interesting outgrowths of the new industrial revolution has
been the reports to directors and stockholders by the chief
executives of our leading corporations, which have ascribed
the recent unprecedented achievements in trade and industry
 to the same constructive policies upon which the majority
 of industrial and financial leaders heaped unreserved
maledictions prior to the year 1923. In the zeal for and
pride in the marvels of the new industrial day, however,
the former anathemas directed against labor leaders, economists,
 and a minority of far-sighted financiers, industrialists,
 and publicists, have fortunately been forgotten.
LaBor’s Status IN THE NEw INDUSTRIAL ERA
Several years ago President Coolidge in a public address
declared: “One of the outstanding features of the present
day is that American wage-earners are living better than
at any other time in our history. . . . Real wages, as determined
 by the things that money wages will buy, are
higher to-day than ever before in our history. ... All
this has been accomplished in spite of a general shortening
of the hours of labor in the industries.”* As time has
passed since this statement was made, officials, students of
economics and publicists have further stressed this situation
 and congratulated the country on the unprecedented
status of industrial workers. Representatives from the
leading industrial nations of the world have also visited
our industries to learn the magic secrets of our prosperity,
which has showed generous profits to capital, in the face of
higher wages to labor and lower prices to consumers.” In
the latter part of 1926, Mr. Carl Snyder, Statistician of the

1 Delivered September 7, 1924.
2 See footnote, p. 3.