The Columbia State
Doubling the price of bacon, beef or coal to the man whose income is $1,000, or even $3,000, a year is a serious matter. Had not wages been greatly increased since 1914, thousands of people would hve starved or perished from cold.
The bricklayer paid $12 a day in a great city may be paid too much, but, in the prime of his life, he is not likely to work more than 250 or 300 days in the year. To men of this kind an increase of $60 in the season’s coal bill is a serious matter. One would better think twice before speaking contemptuously of the high earnings of laboring men.
To the receiver of a salary of $10,000 a year, an increase in the coal bill and the meat bill is not nearly so serious. The cost of necessities is relatively a small factor in his yearly budget. When coal prices rise, the $10,000 a year men can actually give up their Packard for a Buick without actually suffering, but the $3,000 a year man and his family must have a full bin as usual, or shiver.
One hears much said, in anger or in derision, of the wages paid to plumbers, bricklayers and other artisans—but never a word about the salaries of the princes of industry and finance.
Are or are they not receiving twice or three times the salaries they were paid in pre-war times.
What salaries they received are paid by the “ultimate consumer.”
In the cost of living, readjustment is advisable. It should begin at the top. The man who is getting $40,000 a year might be reduced to $30,000 and his family might still be clothed respectably. His children would not be deprived of a college education. Cut down the laboring man’s wages and his children’s shoes would need to be half-soled too often before the buying of new pairs.
It is possible that numbers of person in the United States are being paid too much. The suspicion is abroad that many a president or treasurer of a manufacturing or financial concern is drawing a salary of $12,000 as compared with one of $6,000 in 1914. And some of the salaries are double and treble $12,000.
Meanwhile, many classes of working people are not getting enough.
Curious, how successfully the big salaries are concealed. As a rule, not even the shareholders in stock companies know what they are paying their hired men of the higher class—the presidents and managers.
Why these secrets in business?
“Deflation,” so-called, has been exceedingly painful, but most of the men at the top have escaped the pain.
From the editorial page of The Charlotte Herald, Friday, Jan. 11, 1924
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