214 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES
foreign markets so that they may be able to absorb our sur-
plus output. He very strikingly stated this point of view in
the American Federationist, as follows :*
There is no such thing as a saturation point in the public’s
consumption of goods. Increase the country’s payroll and
the supposed “saturation point” will disappear. There is, on
the other hand, very decidedly such a thing as expanding mar-
kets. Just as our home town industries gradually sold to
state-wide and nation-wide markets, and then to foreign mar-
kets, so have modern mass production and mass distribution
stimulated mass consumption—of Ford cars, Yale locks, type-
writers, cotton goods, shoes, cigarets, etc.—not only in the
United States, but throughout the farthest areas of civilized
life.
Now, where do we come in? What do we get out of this
wonderful growth of mass production and mass distribution,
that is spreading over the country and over the world?
I am a shopkeeper. You are a possible customer. I realize
that to get your trade I must have good goods at right prices
and that you must have steady employment at right wages.
Such good business is based on common sense, fair-minded-
ness, and the economic trinity which has built up our national
prosperity and high standard of living, viz.: Mass production
and mass distribution at high wage scales, and low profit-
taking per article that will insure the third element, mass
consumption.
But to get back to you and me: I must pay salaries that
will enable my employees to buy freely the products of your
work, so that you will have a good margin of surplus earnings
to spend freely in my shop. We all profit by the larger vol-
ume of business done, both in production and distribution,
and we have higher living standards as a result.
In a word, we take in each other’s washing. But all the
wash isn’t in the same basket. Approximately one-third of
1 “Prosperous Neighbors Swell the Nation’s Pay Roll,” by Edward A.
Filene, President, Wm. Filene’s Sons Co., Boston, Mass. American Federa-
tiowist, 1928, pp. 161-163,
