72 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

revival and prosperity of industry. The rectifying of
managerial inefficiencies, the elimination of wasteful
methods and practises, and the securing of the cooperation
and good-will of industrial workers, were pointed out as
essential to the return of normal industrial conditions, and
often more necessary than a cut in wage-rates. As representative
 of this form of enlightened and disinterested
opinion, statements by a distinguished student and educator,
 Doctor Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of
Harvard University, and of a prominent banker and industrial
 executive, Mr. Sam A. Lewisohn, may be cited. Both
citations are taken from a discussion before the Economic
Club of Boston in April, 1921, on the question of a “Comprehensive
 and Considerable Reduction of Wages as the
Only Road to Normal Production and Reasonable Cost
of Living,”
Speaking to this question, Mr. Lewisohn, in part, said:
On the other hand, aside from the matter of the political
and social solidarity of this country, and approaching the
question entirely from the viewpoint of materialistic economics,
 it is of primary importance that labor does not
become resentful and suspicious. Low costs are obviously
not merely a matter of low or even of reasonable wages. It
is just as much a matter of efficiency as all you who are
manufacturers here will recognize. Production standards—
the amount of work performed by each unit each day—is a
large factor in your costs. In view of the great deterioration
in the capital goods of the country since the war, the necessity
 of increased efficiency is self-evident. Now, of course, the
efficiency of labor depends to quite some extent on the state
of the labor market,—whether labor is scarce or plentiful.
The average man will naturally work harder when he realizes
that if he loses his job he cannot get another. But, for-—



1 The Consensus, Volume VI, No. 2, May, 1921. Published quarterly by
the National Economic League, Boston, Mass.