Living wage

“ This is but to restate some of the important influences governing the wages of the lowest groups of industrial workers. But to restate them is to emphasize the fact that the living wage policy must be looked upon merely as one agency among many, directed to the same end. In economic affairs, as in political affairs, to bring about a change in one place it is necessary to bring about a change in many places. ”

“ The living wage policy should be administered in such a way as to spread among the wage earners, the employers, and the public an understanding of the hope and purpose it embodies and a clear knowledge of the factors which will govern its success. Not the least of which factors will be the determination of all grades of wage earners to make good use of whatever new measure of participation in industry they may secure; and the recognition by the employers that the standard 272 of life of their workers is one of their important concerns. ”

“ The living wage is the evolution of the average wage; the former phrase declares that men are requiring official dealings to be more humane than of yore, as well as that the law of wages is not an almighty tyrant to which society must bow, but a law which is more or less obedient to the dictates of man's will. ”

“ The living wage has ordinarily been assessed on different bases for men and women. The basis of assessment for each has been the subject for much controversy. The most generally upheld basis of assessment is, in the case of the male wage earner, to assess his needs on the supposition that he is the supporter of a family consisting of himself, wife, and two or three small children; and in the case of the female wage earner, to assess her needs on the supposition that she is living alone, and is dependent upon her own earnings for her support, and that she has no other obligations. ”

“ Its results are always complicated by circumstances which differ from place to place. Again, there is the fact that such experiments as that of the living wage are apt to be judged from a rapidly changing viewpoint.
The very conscientious efforts which have been made, however, to measure the effect of the various experiments with living wage legislation furnish us with much valuable material on most of 189 the debated matters. ”

“ If labor organization has been able to increase the wages of certain groups of wage earners without doing equivalent harm in any other direction, there is reason for believing that a living wage policy can accomplish something of the same result for the lowest grades of industrial labor, which have been up to the present practically without organization. ”

“ Apart from the special problems of experts, the great economic question of the day is that of the remuneration of labor and its relation to the cost of living. In Parliament and the press the questions of a minimum or living wage and of the purchasing power of existing wages are continually debated ”

“ The statutory definition of the living wage is a wage adequate to meet the normal and reasonable needs of the worker. In other words, the conception is ethical rather than economic. The Court has not to determine the value of the services rendered, but to determine what is necessary to meet normal and relative needs. 183 It should be obvious that in the interpretation of reasonable needs the court cannot be wholly indifferent to the national income. ”

“ Where there exists a constant over-supply of labour competing for what must be regarded at any particular time as a fixed quantity of employment, wages are determined with tolerably close reference to the lowest standard of living among that class of workers, and not by any fixed or customary money wage. ”

“ When we have considered the cost of living, it will be seen how wholly inadequate these wages are, and how inevitable it is that the consequences of this insufficiency should show themselves in the physical and social conditions of the wage-earning classes. ”

“ IV. The social argument: it is for the common good that the average employee should be paid a living wage. And since the Consuming Class is merely the body politic, from one point of view, it is bound to sacrifice the advantage of cheap buying for the sake of the rounded advantage of the whole. ”

“ That argument is that it will prove impossible to maintain uniform standard wage rates throughout an industry in which the various enterprises are distributed over a wide area; in the several parts of which area the cost of living, the general conditions of labor, and the demand and supply situation for labor differ considerably. ”

“ Low wages for the great majority of the laborers employed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low compared with the prices—so low as to be inadequate to the maintenance of a normal American standard of living ”

“ It should apply to all groups of workers whose average annual earnings fall below the sum settled upon by the constituted agency as the minimum necessary for the fulfillment of the living wage idea. The statistical definition of the term "average" as just used should also be left to the constituted agency. ”

“ These sums provide for the maintenance of a family of five at an American standard of living, where the father is the sole wage-earner. It should be recognized, however, that the foreign families are frequently larger and that in many of them there are several wage-earners. Their standard of living, on the other hand, is intrinsically lower. ”

“ The laborer’s demand for an increased wage was always based upon an increased cost of living, which was itself chiefly due to increased cost of production from reluctant concessions of his former demands. ”

“ Still another matter to be noted is that if differences in the cost of living are recognized in the enforcement of standardization, there will be some tendency for the abler and more energetic workmen to drift to the points where money wages are higher. ”

“ As a matter of fact, standards of living have changed greatly within the last five years. On the one hand, there have been substitutions as prices have mounted, and on the other, wage increases greater than advances in the cost of living have in many instances enabled families to buy more and better goods than ever before. ”

“ Under practically all living wage legislation special provision is made for them.
It should also be remarked in this connection, that the probable greater range of individual 195 efficiency among the unskilled as compared with the skilled is in some measure to be attributed to their present low wage levels. Inefficiency is likely to grow upon itself. ”

“ A compromise would make allowance, firstly; for the fact that in times of rising prices, those groups whose wages are lowest cannot meet the rise in the cost of living by changing their consumption habits as easily as can the more fortunately placed groups, and 237 secondly; in times of rising prices, the movements of the wage earners from industry, or from occupation to occupation are governed, within limits, by calculations of the absolute change in the wages paid for different kinds of labor, rather than by calculations of relative change. ”

“ Are the enterprises in genuine competition with each other? And secondly, do wages at the several places differ in correspondence with the differences in the cost of living? To the extent that these conditions hold true, any shift of industry away from the points where the cost of living is low, as a result of wage standardization, would not be uneconomical—in the sense of this argument. ”

“ An average per head of 4s. 103⁄4d. a week for food.
If the wages never rise, and if the family grows larger, the amounts spent on burial insurance, soap, coal, gas, and, later on, rent will increase, leaving less and less for food, with more people to feed on the less amount. Extra bedding will [149] eventually have to be bought, though the parents will naturally put off that moment as long as possible. Should the wage rise gradually to 24s., or even 25s., it would not all go upon the general living. ”

“ For then, the ability of the enterprises established at the points where the cost of living was relatively high to compete with the others would indicate that they benefited by some compensating advantage in their location. ”

“ They reveal a tendency for money wages and living costs to be high in the largest cities, and for both money wages and living costs to decline in the cities making up the smaller population groups. No correlation can be found between living costs and money wages as between individual cities, however. ”

“ In wage-labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage-labourer. ”

“ Do you think that labor demands have exceeded labor's fair share of the increase in profits?
I do not think labor demands have exceeded labor's fair share. The high cost of living fully offsets the greater wages paid. ”

“ If the productive organization has at its command a plentiful supply of capital; if in the community there are many men possessed of a high order of business ability; if then, 55 labor for the commoner tasks of production is relatively scarce, the work of the ordinary wage earner will be a means of adding considerably to the total of market values produced. Or, as it is sometimes put, each use of labor will be an important use. Labor will be in great demand, and wages will be high. ”

“ Chapter III Wages and capital The cause that produces poverty in the midst of advancing wealth is evidently the cause that exhibits itself in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages to a minimum. ”