274 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES 
more successful policy. As a matter of historical com- 
parison 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 indus- 
try to the same constructive policies upon which the ma- 
jority 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, econ- 
omists, and a minority of far-sighted financiers, indus- 
trialists, 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 de- 
termined 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 situa- 
tion 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.