The Dinner Pail
THE DINNER PAIL AMONG the curious by-products of Mr. Matthew Woll's recent denunciation of trade with Soviet Russia is the tendency to foster a labor orthodoxy—a right theory of social and...
...This problem, in which ethical, political and economic facts are so inextricably tangled, would seem to require more from the American Federation of Labor (and, of course, from American industry as a whole also) than it has hitherto received...
...Behind this drift there exists, of course, the ideal and practice of high wages...
...again it is the "purchasing power wage," which stresses the circumstance that a man with money in his pocket embraces opportunities to spend it for things which, in their turn, can be produced at a rate which makes possible good dividends...
...There is a well established tradition that American unionists do not believe in politics...
...Can this ideal be upheld...
...Moreover the effect upon industrial engineering was extraordinary, since improved equipment was needed to keep down production costs...
...Nevertheless both labor and capital are in the church, and consciousness of ethical responsibility must be regarded as signs of their earnestness in clinging to that membership...
...That means willingness to tackle far more immediate and baffling questions than the one of our relationship to the Russian social order...
...Good bricklayers made as much as five dollars a day...
...Sometimes it is known as the "security wage," which emphasizes the workingman's opportunity to lay aside a part of his earnings to take care of emergencies...
...No more serious charge can be made against our generation," the Council declares, "than that it has been socially so blind and morally so callous that it has been unwilling to divert sufficient profits of modern industry to store up reserves for the protection of the unemployed and the security of the aged...
...Woll's advocacy of an embargo upon Russian products is essentially a daring effort to use protection as an instrument for reaching social goals of the greatest importance...
...Then, says the World, something else happened...
...Organized labor seems to have accepted this determination as an article of the American creed...
...The message from which we have quoted rightly believed that "it may not be in the province of the church to suggest detailed plans" of improvement...
...On the other hand, it is increasingly obvious that the ideal thus sponsored is no panacea...
...It has insisted on the rights of property to dividends but has concerned itself too little with the rights of workers to security of employment and to protection in old age...
...The background, we are told, is constituted by recurrent clashes between labor and capital most of which were settled by the law of supply and demand...
...Indeed, Mr...
...But industry began to pick up nevertheless and the "boom" grew steadily more pronounced...
...Or does the effort to defend it involve extreme measures like those recently advocated by Mr...
...An especially poignant wrong is that done to old, experienced workers who find that, for reasons inherent in machine production, youthful stamina is the only human quality upon which industry insists...
...This last has been variously defined...
...All the old timers were so afraid of compulsory arbitration and the courts that they would not venture within a stone's throw of Washington...
...To those who have lived long enough to recall how things were previous to the war, the scale of wages and prices then obtaining seems almost incredible...
...The economic history of our country during recent years is written in terms of steadily enlarging dinner pails...
...Today we have not merely a different scale but a different popular conception of the pay envelope ideal...
...The labor Sunday message of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ stresses this point...
...Matthew Woll's recent denunciation of trade with Soviet Russia is the tendency to foster a labor orthodoxy—a right theory of social and economic action which, it is hoped, will characterize the good Federationist...
...The number of workers who can profit noticeably by the system is limited, and the effect of technological advances upon employment is obvious...
...Either we shall have to develop new and profitable industrial enterprises, or we shall have to accept as an unavoidable circumstance the steady increase in number of the jobless...
...In the present generation the Federation is the chief advocate of restricted immigration, one of the staunchest defenders of protection, and—so it would seem—an occasional proponent of monopoly...
...In its way it is quite as stringent as the present Australian system, which virtually guarantees unionized workers against all competition...
...The reasons why Mr...
...The determination of representative captains of industry to maintain wage scales is," we are told, "one of the best assurances of a business revived on a sound basis as soon as demand and supply are brought into a better alignment...
...Little by little, however, this policy has been modified...
...Declaring that although "the high productive capacity of modern industry has created wealth" no answer to the problem of just distribution has been found, the message calls attention to obvious evils...
...Woll combats Moscow are many and sometimes excellent, but the ease with which he assumes that organized labor will support his effort to use government action as a means to an end is striking and novel...
...In its issue of August 4 the New York World devoted an interesting editorial to the topic...
...After 1921, however, a law restricting immigration went into effect, to be followed almost immediately by a downpour of employers' propaganda claiming that prosperity could not return until labor had agreed to accept a deflated pay envelope...
...Employers found out that the increased purchasing power of better paid workers was creating a new army of consumers, and many of them ardently advocated the policy of high wages...
...and a farmer could get a hired man who was not particularly strict about quitting time for thirty dollars a month...
...This is, of course, different from mere opposition to Communist principle...
...Even today there is no marked drift among capitalists to oppose the trend and revive the old era of low wages...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 16
