Dolor (VERSE)
Thérèse, Sister
October I6, I929 THE COMMONWEAL creased costs, be they great orlittle, would be defrayed only in part by the wage-earners, inasmuch as they are not the only consumers of the goods af[ected...
...So oft in dreams my steps come near This solemn, sealed and silent bier...
...It is too bad that the Committee did not explicitly accept the implications of this recognized fact...
...Hence, the first and obvious requisite is to raise wages somehow, with some kind of money...
...Paraphrasing this statement, we observe that American prosperity would have been decidedly greater during the same period had the ten million or more underpaid American laborers been receiving adequate wages...
...Nothing, therefore, can go so far toward sustaining trade and employment as increasing the weekly payroll of the country fast enough, and not too fast...
...Tis well--a life-long wish shall be Fulfilled in its sweet agonyThat I that ashen face may see...
...The only practical methods now available are increased organization of labor and the economic, social and ethical education of the masters of industry and all other influential groups in our population...
...He believes that this is true at least so long as his competitors fail to adopt the policy of high wages...
...The real difficulties confronting the proposal for a better organization of our distributive system, for a better combination of the desire to consume with the power to consume, have to do with the methods for obtaining the requisite increase in wages...
...Am I the only mourner here...
...A grey, cold couch on which there lay Two days and then another day One whose own child was far away...
...Indeed, the Committee on Recent Economic Changes gives some measure of endorsement to the doctrine and proposal here advocated when it declares that one of the ten outstanding developments in our industrial history since I92o has been "the recognition of wage-earners as the great domestic market...
...The economic factors and implications are exactly the same in the two cases...
...A pang through life my heart has bled...
...To see that face but once," I said, "And I would leave her with the dead...
...Instead of using language which tended to exaggerate the increase which has taken place in wages, it ought to have frankly pointed out that further increases are necessary before a large proportion of the working classes will have satisfactory incomes, and before their effective demand will be sufficiently enlarged to furnish an adequate market for the products of our industries...
...October I6, I929 THE COMMONWEAL creased costs, be they great orlittle, would be defrayed only in part by the wage-earners, inasmuch as they are not the only consumers of the goods af[ected by the increase...
...Wesley C. Mitchell, who directed the study of recent economic changes, tells us that American prosperity in 1922-1927 in non-agricultural lines would have been decidedly greater had the six million American farmers been flourishing...
...In the second place, these authors admit, nay assert, that a great increase in general consuming power could be obtained through a general advance in wages...
...Owing to the unfavorable decision of the Supreme Court in the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Case, to say nothing of two or three other obstacles, this most important reform is, and for many years to come will remain, impossible of attainment in the United States...
...Up to the bier my steps I takeAnd now, the lonely spell to break, My fingers lift the lid...
...o lor I dream of candles--in the night, A haze of palm--and roses white...
...Happily, it has not been heeded universally...
...This theory has not been considered for two reasons...
...While the individual employer may accept the doctrine that high wages and high purchasing power in the hands of labor are good and necessary for industry as a whole, he realizes, or thinks, that relatively low wages would be more profitable in his own business...
...A curtain drawn against the light...
...In general it should be noted that if this objection were always heeded, it would prevent any increase in wages for any reason whatsoever...
...After all, solid and permanent progress comes slowly in every department of social life...
...It is that overproduction, underconsumption and general unemployment come about because industry does not put sufficient money into the hands of the consumers to pay for all the goods produced...
...To meet this difficulty, the only immediately adequate measure would be minimum wage scales fixed by law...
...SISTER TH~R~;SE...
...The foregoing argument has taken no notice of the thesis upheld in several publications by Foster and Catchings...
...The money phase of the problem, the question how to bring about the right flow of money to the consumers, will then be much more urgent than it is today...
...For example, in a pamphlet reprinted from the Century Magazine, July, I929, these sentences occur: Adequate consumption, therefore, does more than anything else to sustain employment...
...I wake...
...If that measure should fail to increase consuming power sufficiently to take all the goods of[ the market and keep industry going, the time would then be at hand to consider the problem of increasing consumers' credit...
...Now, the largest part of this flow, and the part that is most promptly spent, is the stream of wages...
...And nothing more is needed to achieve the right rate of consumption than the right flow of money to consumers...
...First, in so far as it deals with the flow of money and credit, it is too difficult either to prove or to refute...
...While neither of these methods is likely to produce beneficial results rapidly, they have both proved their ef[ectiveness by experience...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 24
