212 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

As I see it, therefore, high wages do increase the purchasing
 power of employees quite definitely, not through the
direct return of the additional money paid out, but through
stabilizing, steadying and speeding up the manufacture and
exchange of goods; through maintaining an even and regular
flow of production, distribution and consumption, and in large
part obviating idleness, congestion and delay. And the wellmaintained
 average prosperity of the last three years has
been chiefly due, first to the regular employment of workers;
second, to the general speeding up of all industry which this
regular employment has made possible; and third, to abundance
 of easy credit, which in turn has been in considerable
part the result of this regular employment and general speeding
 up. . . . In general, the answer is that it can go on, not
without some moderate reactions and irregularity from time
to time, but without serious depressions. Abundance of housing,
 low interest rates, high prices for securities and big
loans on them, liberal expenditures for luxuries, are the perfectly
 natural results of increased production. We are catching
 more fish with the new fish-hook. We have more because
we are creating more. . . . If we were to get fighting over
the division of our profits; if employers were to start unjustly
 cutting wages, or if employees generally or in large
numbers were to strike for higher wages than industry could
afford to pay them; or if dissatisfied producers in any industry
 were to upset the applecart by obtaining political control
 in their own interest, we could have a depression, certainly,
 proportional in severity to the extent of the disturbance.
 But at present none of these hypothetical difficulties are
in sight,

About the same time as the foregoing was written,
Samuel M. Vauclain, President of the Baldwin Locomotive
 Works, Philadelphia, publicly declared that the highest
possible wages should be paid in all branches of industry in