HAVE WORKERS CLEANED UP ON THE WAR?
Henry, Philip
Have Workers Cleaned Up On The War? By PHILBP HENRY AMERICAN labor is being depicted as a Jekyll-Hyde character: With one hand the workers make the weapons for military victory, with the other...
...this fellow worked 48 hours a week over a 3-months period and at the end of it found himself about $65 in the hole...
...An interesting point is that almost every budget studied included, as an essential, the purchase of War Bonds...
...He had a wife and 2 children...
...480 Clothing...
...They include a vast cross-section of people who are considered in their communities to be "fairly well off," who had owned cars, saved money, and sent their children to college—until the rising cost of necessities put all luxuries, even the smallest, beyond their reach...
...It also takes in very nearly half of all persons listed as "clerical employees," according to a survey made by the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor...
...Murray declared: "The average cost per person per meal is 22 cents...
...By PHILBP HENRY AMERICAN labor is being depicted as a Jekyll-Hyde character: With one hand the workers make the weapons for military victory, with the other they threaten defeat on the home front through inflation caused by demands for higher and higher wages...
...Total ..................................................................$1,700 In other words, this girl was able to do little more than meet half the items on her budget, yet she was definitely not among the lowest paid of Federal government employees...
...It is difficult for one to estimate accurately the thousands of new millionaires that might be created out of the present war situation...
...It may sound preposterous— but it is true—that economists fear for the very physical health, due to malnutrition, of millions of "average Americans" and their children...
...Rising living costs have made paupers of at least two-thirds of the nation...
...Scattered about the country are the 2.400,000 persons or families who alone can bid with their surplus money for the scarce goods and curtailed services which all Americans must share...
...Not only union-baiters, but scores of thousands of Americans usually sympathetic to the working man, have fallen into the habit of assuming that labor's rewards in the past 3 years have been disproportionately high—that the average industrial worker has "made a good thing out of the war...
...Even where it meant the difference between a standard of living just below or just above the minimum mark, the 10 per cent contribution for bonds was an automatic entry...
...Another large segment of the population who are still "financially underprivileged" although approaching the margin are the 12,200,000 income recipients who average $2,500 a year...
...With a wife and 2 dependents, Mr...
...Miscellaneous...
...72 War Bonds...
...Recreation...
...But they are buried so deep in voluminous reports of Congressional committees that they are all but lost to the public...
...65 Taxes...
...125 Dependents...
...He is getting a cheaper grade of food, for which" he is paying higher prices...
...His 3-months earnings were $521, expenses $696...
...All that the nation's entire manufacturing manpower could contribute to "inflation" today is an average of $2.39 per single worker...
...next, 500,000 persons with a net return after taxes of $11,400 each on the average, and 1,800,000 people who made an average of $6,500 a year after taxes...
...Still well below the "very narrow margin" are the 24,400,000 recipients of average annual incomes of $1,500, who can afford to spend only 60 cents of the $1 called for by "bare living" standards...
...Claude Pepper's report on behalf of the Senate subcommittee—a body formed to consider health problems in relation to wartime living standards—reveals that "spokesmen for both labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics agreed that with prices as they stand even an income of as much as $50 a week provides 'a very narrow margin of living.' " If this is so, then what Americans today come even within that "very narrow margin...
...Murray said a CIO survey showed that living costs were up nearly 50 per cent...
...other millions are merely "breaking even," and even the highest paid are left with "cash profits" so trifling that they could no more contribute to inflation than a drop of water to an ocean tide...
...Under this category would fall a large percentage of small business men, accountants, bookkeepers, dispatchers, cashiers, statisticians, switchboard operators, librarians, hospital staff nurses...
...If an overwhelming proportion of Americans literally have not the means of helping cause inflation— on the contrary, their necessarily restricted spending is an anti-inflation measure—who then can be blamed...
...Vacation...
...These facts are on Government record...
...Some Sobering Figures "The Department of Commerce reported a crop of 23.000 new millionaires created during the last war...
...Murray told the Senate body of a 23-year-old oiler whose rate was 83 1/2 cents an hour...
...The people with money left over in America today are these: 100,000 individuals who this year will have left, after paying taxes, an average of $30,000 each for their 12 months' labor...
...Just what constitutes a "minimum living wage" is a matter for considerable argument, but Sen...
...A skilled electrical industry worker finds himself minus $2.18 a week, and an employee of the publishing trades is out of pocket no less than $9.05...
...In this category would fall virtually every social-insurance beneficiary, all recipients of state or Federal aid, the blind, most "white collar" and military pensioners, virtually all rural school teachers, and the large groups of fixed-income families...
...Even more difficult to unearth is the untold story of the plight of 20.000 families of "white-collar workers," from shoe store clerks to college professors, from Government employees to bank cashiers...
...Her budget read like this: Room ....................................................................$396 Food...
...Personal Care...
...They alone have the power to send the cost of living soaring beyond the present height, where $1.25 or $1.50 is needed to buy what a dollar would 4 years ago...
...Philip Murray, CIO president, gave an incredulous Senate subcommittee on wartime health the actual case of a skilled "upper-bracket" war worker...
...At the bottom of the scale, 21,600,000 Americans in 1944 received incomes of less than $1,000 a year, actually an average of $873 each...
...Profits in American industry for 1943, after all taxes and other obligations had been paid out...
...365 Carfare...
...Without in any way begrudging this payment, the wage or salary earners simply put down the item and deducted the amount from their "take-home" pay report...
...At the time, the official index was approximately 24 per cent above the Jan...
...Whence Comes Inflation...
...Their plight is the result, not the cause of inflation...
...A YWCA case history shows the situation of a girl who received a government appointment in Washington at $1,700 a year, of which she contributed less than $10 a week to her parents' support...
...The startling truth is that today millions of war workers are "living in a deficit"—borrowing money or incurring debts to keep their families at unemployment relief levels...
...reached the staggering figure of $8.200.000.000—the highest in the history of the United States, and more than double 1939...
...Questioned by the subcommittee on the food bills of the man who made $1.21 an hour, Mr...
...In the case of what he called a "medium-priced man," Mr...
...These are the figures of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics...
...He made $1.21 an hour, more than the wage paid 8 out of 10 of his 1.750,000 fellow workers in the iron and steel industry...
...There is another matter in connection with this situation which creates alarm—the corporate profits situation that has grown out of the war...
...The man spent all his clothing money on work clothes, and only $8.6:5 for recreation for the family...
...Nothing was spent on adult suits or overcoats...
...1, 1941 mark...
...Mr...
...197 Social Security...
...Murray's contention is that the cost of living index furnished by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is grossly inaccurate...
...Index Grossly Inaccurate A worker in the war-essential machine tools industry today is short by $4.76 a week of meeting his January, 1941, standard of living, despite a gross wage increase of $18 a week in 4 years...
...He is one of the higher-priced fellows in the steel industry...
...He is paying a lot more for food, and he is not getting enough...
...The difference was made up by spending previous savings, including redemption of bonds, borrowing, and increasing his indebtedness at the stores...
...There are no extravagancies in this report," the CIO head testified, "no indication of inflationary spending...
...Murray said, the man received $817 during the 3-months period under review—and spent S893...
...In other words over 20,000,000 wage-earners were able to buy only 30 cents worth of food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for every $1 they should have spent...
...Emergencies...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 21
