Wage system

“ This system means, as I have shown, an addition to the day rate of wages, and therefore the unions might arrange for a lower wage to be paid to semi-skilled workers, and rely on individual efficiency to bring wages approximately up to the union rate. ”

“ What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest—this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it.
90As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class. ”

“ That its results may depend to some extent upon the success with which the principle can be adopted to those methods of wage payment under which wages are varied in accordance with small differences in in-unionism, and act accordingly, the system of wage earners believe heartily in the ideals and aims of unionism, and act accordingly, the system of wage payment adopted will be a factor of secondary importance in determining the effectiveness with which the wage earners perform their work. ”

“ The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. ”

“ It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity of work. ”

“ These can only be understood by a study of the economic facts and arrangements which govern distribution, and by weighing many questions of social and economic expediency. To talk about basing wages solely on the effort of the worker is to ignore the obvious fact that much of the most laborious work is the worst paid.
The exponents of scientific management have not discovered a law of wages; they have simply elaborated a method of wage payment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And, secondly, what may be called for a lack of a better name, the doctrine of special reward—by which is meant, that the wage differentials between the standard wage levels of different types of labor should be regarded as special rewards, given in order to make it reasonably certain that industry will be provided with at least the existing proportion of the more skilled grades of labor, and to make it reasonably certain also that the more arduous, irregular, dangerous and disagreeable work will command the service of as much labor as at present. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most important of these possible departures from the ordinary basis of assessment is the enforcement of the same wage rates for men and women when they are employed 271 upon the same work. The living wage in any industry should be a standard wage, subject to all the qualifications and limitations of other standard wage rates.
The success of the living wage policy will depend in a great degree upon the good judgment with which it is adapted to the conditions obtaining in each individual industry or occupation in which it is enforced. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the other, the wage earner is viewed primarily as a member of an occupational group or class, whose wages should be regulated by the standard of life of his group or class, rather than by strict measurement 142 of his own individual capacity. ”

“ The standard of life and comfort affects the wages of labor, and there is constant effort to make the wage correspond to this standard. It is an unending and often bitter struggle, nowhere better summed up than by Thorold Rogers in his "Six Centuries of Work and Wages,"—a work upon which economists, however different their conclusions, rely alike for facts and figures.
We must then admit in degree the tendency of wages to a minimum, especially those of unskilled labor, and accept it as one more motive for persistent effort to alter existing conditions and prevent any such culmination. ”

“ This conception of a standard of life, though fluctuating, is a relatively fixed thing in the flux of forces determining distribution. The workman, by combination tacit or explicit, fixes it and his employer adjusts production to it. The employer will do all in his power, usually with success, to secure an increase in output in return for every increase of wages, and where the local standard compels him to pay higher wages than his competitor in 60 other districts to extract an amount of work correspondingly greater. ”

“ The minimum wage for our laborers must be standardized and stabilized. I have urged the Labor-Management Advisory Board, in which capital and labor are equally represented, to submit a schedule it of wages applicable in the different industries and localities. ”

“ With the increasing complexity of society, many other problems presented themselves to the worker, but for the most part they were subsidiary to the main question of wages. As long as man’s place was fixed by law or custom, a customary wage left small margin for controversy. But when fixed status gave way to voluntary contract, when payment was made in money, when workmen were free to journey from town to town, labor became both free and fluid, bargaining took the place of custom, 12 and the wage controversy began to assume definite proportions. ”

“ If these assumptions were realized in fact, it would be correct to view the problem of wages as the study of one set of relationships that governed a basic level of wages—called the general rate of wages—with purely supplementary studies of the circumstances governing equalizing differences. The problem of wages would be a study of forces which were uniformly influential in relation to the wages of all labor. ”

“ If there are a thousand workmen employed, getting $2 each per day, that would be a wage fund of $2,000 a day. If, when prices fall and business becomes dull, the employer should want to reduce the pay of each workman to $1.50 a day, and if the workmen, by striking, should prevent that decrease, and if, then, 25 per cent. of their number should be discharged, the loss to the working class, as a body, and to the community at large, would be the same as though the wages were reduced to $1.50 a day. ”

“ That presumption arises from the fact that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, the higher range of unstandardized wages indicates what wages may be enforced throughout the occupation without causing great disturbance and unemployment. ”

“ Any exact correspondence between wages and the price of the product would exclude the wage-earners, as such, from all share in the advantages of improvements in production, cheapening of carriage, and the fall in the rate of interest, which might otherwise be turned to account in an advance in the workman’s Standard of Life. ”

“ It should be observed, first of all, that neither 220 of these two doctrines upholds the rights of particular groups of wage earners. They aim to bring all wage earning groups to perceive that they are part of a larger whole; they emphasize the fact that the wages of each group are what they are, more because the total wage income is what it is, than because of the special type of work performed by the group. ”

“ So the Wage Boards Act and the Miners' Minimum Wage Act established machinery for fixing a wage in certain employments which, having regard to the circumstances of each trade, would insure that the wage-earner should enjoy a reasonable standard of health and comfort. ”

“ And, therefore, even if the view that each individual should get what he produces were found to be acceptable as a basis for distribution, any attempt to base wages solely upon considerations of individual or group output must rest on a false assumption. Any laws or principles for the determination of wages must reckon with a far wider and more numerous set of considerations than those taken into account by the scientific management theories of wages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is to say, whether any measure can be elaborated by which all wages could be adjusted, according as profits in industry as a whole exceeded, approximated, or fell below the profits level that is taken to mark just and sound distribution of the product of industry. ”

“ It is impossible to tell the extent to which differences in inborn capacity would lead to the formation of relatively separate groups of labor, if all the other assumptions underlying the theory of a general rate of wages were fulfilled in fact. ”

“ At present, wages in different industries or occupations are not settled in accordance with any principle which includes them all and which is the basis of an ordered scheme of wage relationship. The existence of a very high profits return throughout a particular industry is an almost prima facie justification for a wage demand on the part of the wage earners employed in it. ”

“ The employers are not likely to seek such wage rates as will not procure the needed labor supply; and only in rare cases are the wage earners likely to press for increases of wages that would bring about an increased measure of unemployment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Can the desire of the wage earners to be viewed primarily as members of occupational groups or classes be satisfied by the enforcement of standardization, without ignoring the need for a high level of production. ”

“ The law then intervenes, making labor in effect more expensive for all by requiring the superior conveniences or by compelling employers' insurance against accidents to workmen or by enforcing outright a higher minimum wage. The old basic labor cost becomes thus obsolete. ”

“ Wage variations are interdependent It is indeed evident from observation, as it must be from theory, that whatever be the circumstances which produce the difference of wages in different occupations, and although they frequently vary in relation to each other (producing, as between time and time, and place and place, greater or less relative differences) yet the rate of wages in one occupation is always dependent on the rate in another ”

“ It is plain that, if any other principle were also to be adopted, under which wages in particular industries 249 were adjusted by reference to the profits return in these industries, that scheme of relationship would be constantly disturbed. ”

“ Among these is the influence of customary wage relationships upon the course of wage movements within an industry, and to a lesser extent throughout industry. Because of the existence of vague customary relationships, wage movements affecting some groups or classes of labor are likely to 83 stimulate similar movements among other groups; though it is plain that the efforts of different groups may not meet with equal success. ”

“ And no element in the whole policy of wage settlement should stand in the way of the payment of a higher wage than that fixed by the central authority for any type of work. 225 Thus no fear would have to be entertained that any industry would be faced with a shortage of labor due to the difficulty of getting precise knowledge on which to base wage differentials. ”