218 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES
were only self-seeking agencies, promoting their own interests
at the expense of any other element that might interpose
objection. These persons have tried to make a case against
wage increases as a selfish end, detrimental to the rest of society.
The new economic literature which interprets the infAuence
of consumption as a factor in the business cycle, is
helping to reveal the constructive economic consequences of
organized labor’s high wage standard.
The Executive Council of the Federation of Labor also
strengthened President Green’s statements by a formal
declaration in 1926, as follows :!
American methods of production and efficiency are the subject
of study by employers, technicians and wage-earners of
many countries. The American labor movement has been
foremost in recognizing the interdependence of the interest
of all concerned with production and in declaring that increased
productivity is essential to permanent increases in
the standards of living. On the other hand, American labor
has pointed out that workers must have wage increases if
there is to be sale for the increased output of industries and
agriculture. . . . The results of organized labor’s activities
benefit the whole of the general public. High wages and
shorter working hours are recognized as national assets. The
public generally is coming to understand that with the great
tendency of mass production continuing in the future to the
same degree as has been experienced in the past there must
be created of necessity an ever enlarging buying power or
else our productive processes will spell their own ruination
and prove a public calamity. The wage-earners and their
dependents constitute a large proportion of that consuming
public; it is therefore essential that the income of the wageearners
must of necessity increase.
The “new thought” as to productiveness, prosperity, and
consumption has already become a commonplace of bank-1
Report of the Executive Council to the 46th Annual Convention, Detroit,
Michigan, October 4, 1926; p. 27.
