LABOR’S NEW STATUS

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New York Federal Reserve Bank, aptly described the
zxtraordinary conditions which then prevailed, as follows :?
But the gain to the worker has, of course, been immense
—the relative “spread” between the wage level and the
average “cost of living” having been in the last three years
probably greater than at any time in the last half-century.
The difference between these three years and the years immediately
 preceding the War is not less than 20 or 25 per
cent. This must mean, for the 30-odd million wage-workers
of the country, a difference in extra spending power of not
less than 6 or 8 billions annually; which, in the writer’s mind,
goes far to explain the prolonged building boom and huge
sales of automobiles and other things formerly classed as
luxuries.

There is no doubt as to the accuracy of these statements.
Large gains have accrued to labor as a whole, both from
its added participation in the net revenue gains of industry
and from the accompanying decline in prices of articles
entering into the consumption of the average wage-earner’s
family. As a general proposition, the poor in America
since the war have grown richer along with the rich. It
has been estimated that the purchasing power of wages in
the United States has increased 35 per cent., as compared
with the year 1913, or with the period immediately preceding
 the World War. The studies of the Research
Division of the American Federation of Labor also show
that in March, 1928, the index of labor’s share in manufacturing
 production was 10 per cent. greater than in 1922,
the year immediately preceding the existing era of unparalleled
 industrial expansion. During the same period, it
also estimated the share of labor in consumption to have
advanced 15 per cent. Within the brief history of the
new industrial revolution. so to speak, money wages in-“1%A
 New Composite Index of Wages in the United States,” by Carl
Snyder, Journal, American Statistical Asso.. December. 1926.