LABOR’S NEW STATUS 
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men, steam railway engine and train crews and shop crafts, 
the needle trades, and hard and soft coal miners, By way 
of illustration: “The Union Scale of Wages,” which is 
compiled by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
and which represents almost a million highly organized 
workers, chiefly in the building, printing, and metal trades, 
showed an increase of 150 per cent. in rates of pay per 
hour, and 133 per cent. per full-time week, in 1926, as 
compared with the year 1914; while at the other extreme, 
the average weekly earnings of unorganized groups, such 
as automobile workers, farm laborers, and iron and steel 
workers, increased during the same period only 98, 73. and 
72 per cent., respectively. 
The actual earnings of the organized groups have also 
ranged much higher than those of the great mass of un- 
organized workers, altho there is also a considerable num- 
ber of skilled and relatively highly paid workmen who are 
not members of labor organizations. 
As to the adequacy of earnings of wage-earners, even 
since the time of their participation in the gains of indus- 
trial expansion, only the more skilled groups may be said 
to be earning sufficient to maintain their families on a 
proper standard of living. The Secretary of Labor, James 
J. Davis, in addressing the American Federation of Labor 
Convention at Los Angeles in 1927, in this connection per- 
inently said - 
Even among the millions of workers regularly employed, 
we all know there are many who do not share in the good 
Wages received by the others. The skilled American worker 
is paid a higher wage than workers have ever received in 
ristory. What we call common labor is paid little higher 
than the same type of labor in England, and not much higher 
than common labor is paid in Germany. Wages for common 
abor in this country are all out of scale.