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Friday, August 9, 2019

Editor Cautions That Strikes May Give Unions Too Much Power, Aug. 9, 1919

From the editorial page of The Daily Times, Wilson, N.C., Aug. 9, 1919. The inflation rate was 14.5%.

Men Returning to Work

Our dispatches today report that the shopmen are returning to work pending negotiations between President Wilson, the Railroad Administration and the heads of the unions.

We trust that the matter may be adjusted with reason and common sense on both sides, for whenever our prejudices, our interests, or our feelings weigh a question that should be settled absolutely upon a basis of a question of facts and conditions, there can be no permanent solution, for if the equilibrium is to be maintained it must be done with a view to being just to all concerned.

Labor insists that the cost of living shall be reduced, for what profiteth a man if he shall gain the whole world and expend it for the price of a chicken or a piece of steak, and labor is right in this particular, but when labor says that it must have a guaranteed wage, and a guaranteed number of hours work each day, who is to guarantee it, if the conditions are not such as to warrant it.

Labor has seen it illustrated in the handling of the railroads. The government had lost enormous quantities of money in their operation. We are not prepared to say whose fault it is, but we know that the fact remains that the roads would not pay expenses in the face of higher passenger and freight rates. The laboring man very naturally feels that if the roads are returned to their owners that they cannot stand the drain and they are right, but this is no reason why the roads should be operated at a loss and the public be made to pay for it.

We grant that every man is entitled to a living wage, and should have it, but there should be just as much co-operation on the part of the workingmen to make the job pay his employer a profit, that the employer shall receive a profit with which to run the business and pay his wage.

It is alleged that the unions insist that only so many cars shall be pulled on a train, and that full crews shall be carried, but what if there is not sufficient business on the train to pay expenses, when if the crew were cut down to just sufficient to handle the train, and just as much load were put on the engine as it can pull, that would increase the earning capacity.

One of the labor leaders stated in his evidence before the committee that the workingmen intended to organize the steel trust. Well suppose they do, and say how much shall be produced in a given length of time by curtailing the number of hours, and placing a larger force than necessary to yield a certain amount of work. Can they make it pay without changing the entire economic system of the world?

But what is the man and the business going to do who has not guaranteed fixed price. Will he not suffer? Will such a procedure be fair to him?

The fates seem to be after Mr. Consumer, and unless the government looks after him it would appear that he is about to get the worst of it. About the time the government started its campaign against the high cost of living 33,000 men in the stock yards struck for higher wages. This with the strike of the railroad men, makes things look blue for the country, although the master hand of Mr. Wilson is helping out with government food and work against the ever busy profiteer.

But for this food the government, which is thrown on the markets for the purpose of helping to break the high cost of living in the face of embargo, the condition of the poor, especially in the large cities, would have been pitiable indeed. But America is a country of vast resources and wonderful productive capacity. Let us not attempt however to cut down our productive capacity too greatly by a reduction of hours, for if we do with continued increase in population we shall find that the consumption will increase while the production will decrease, and the price of living will be ever on the rise.

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