In fact, says Muste, given the huge leaps in production, U.S. workers were then paid far less paid than they were previously, to say nothing of large number of working class families taking on the expenses of what was formerly a middle class lifestyle to include school, a car, and a vacation.

‘Wages Are Rotten! Puncturing the Fairy Tale About High Pay’ by A.J. Muste from Labor Age. Vol. 5 No. 11. November, 1926.

EVERYWHERE you hear it. “The American worker gets high wages; he is well off.” Propaganda emanating directly or indirectly from employers says so from pulpit, platform and press in a million ways a million times a day. That is to be expected, as also that this amazing prosperity of the American worker should be ascribed to the “American” open shop plan.

Delegations of employers from abroad come to America and go back to report about the high wages of the American worker, his radios, automobiles, and so on. That also is perhaps to be expected.

What is somewhat stranger is the delegations of trade unionists from Europe who come here and are presently singing the same song: “American worker get high wages; they are well off; nothing like it ever before anywhere in the world.”

The American worker says it and appears to believe it. Henry Dubb throws out his chest and proclaims: “The American worker gets the highest wages in the world.”

What is strangest of all is that many American trade unionists seem to be hypnotized by the monotonous repetition of the refrain and they too are beginning to chant it. “You can’t organize because they get such high wages; they are too well off; look at their radios, automobiles…”

A Most Amazing Myth

What are the facts? They are simple and so easy to read that it is amazing that this myth should ever have gotten started.

Compared to the wages paid to European workers, the American worker is getting high wages. What else would you expect in the richest country in all the history of the world? What is there in that to raise all this hullabaloo about?

Compared to the wages he received fifteen or twenty years ago, the American worker is fairly well off; his “real wages”, what he can buy for what he gets in his pay envelope, having improved considerably. But Professor Paul Douglas of the University of Chicago, one of the most eminent economists in the country, whom no one will suspect of Bolshevist leanings, has painstakingly demonstrated that production has increased in these fifteen or twenty years much more rapidly than wages, that compared to what he is producing, the American worker is NOT AS WELL OFF, NOT AS WELL PAID, as he was some years ago.

And what about that comparison with the wages of the European worker? Let me cite one instance in point from an unimpeachable authority, Mr. Alfred P. Dennis, Vice Chairman of the United States Tariff Commission. Writing in the New York Times for October 10, 1926.

Mr. Dennis states: “An American weaver operating highly efficient automatic looms tends as many as thirty or forty, where the English weaver tends from two to four. The writer has in mind a highly equipped cotton plant in Rhode Island with 2,910 looms under one roof. These looms are all alike, using American cotton and turning out a standardized product that sells on a quality basis. Twenty looms are tended by one girl, or one hundred and fifty weavers all told in contrast to the one thousand or twelve hundred weavers which would be employed in an English establishment turning out an equal amount of finished goods. The flying shuttle in these highly efficient American looms shoots one hundred fifty-eight threads across the cloth per minute. This means an output of twenty-three yards of cloth per loom per day or four hundred sixty yards for each operator. Taking fourteen cents a yard as a fair valuation, the labor cost of cloth bears a proportionately small ratio to the total expense.”

There you have it. Considering what the American worker produces as compared with the European worker, the American worker is not well paid.

Take another point. In one breath the American worker is exhorted to save money, to send his children to school and college, to buy a radio set so as to be up to the minute on his news, to purchase an automobile. In the next breath, statistics are launched forth about all the savings in American banks, the increased attendance at college and universities, the number of radio sets and automobiles being purchased, with the implication that the American worker is rolling in wealth and that it is a dirty shame what high wages he gets. Now, the open-shoppers and bankers can’t have it both ways. They can’t eat their cake and have it too.

Not Better Off

The fact is that the American worker is expected to measure up to certain standards of living or be regarded as a poor citizen. At many points he has to spend more than his father did in order to get the same amount of well being that his father had. Take the one notorious case of all those flivvers standing at the factory gates showing what bloated plutocrats the workers are. Not to mention the fact that there are still a few million workers who don’t have flivvers, given the congestion in our industrial centers and given our inadequate transportation systems, how many of these workers could get to the factories situated miles from their homes unless they had these flivvers? How many of them could take their families out of the noise, dirt and heat of our cities for an occasional breath of air and glimpse of sunlight but for these Fords? Twenty-five years ago the American worker lived near enough to the factory so that he could reach it on a five-cent street car fare, and he received enough pay to enable him to do so. Today he lives so far away from the factory that he needs a flivver to reach it and receives enough pay to be able to do so. Just how much better off is he? In view of the standards he is expected to maintain, the American worker is not substantially better off than he was a generation ago.

All reputable economists tell us these days that unless American workers consume the tremendous amount of goods they produce, there will be another cycle of glutted markets, over production, slackening of industry, bankruptcies, unemployment. But the latest figures indicate that the workers as a whole are not as well off as to money wages as they were a couple of years ago. For the time being, the difficulty is being covered up because the big fellows are letting the workers buy everything on the installment plan, but the difficulty is there. Considering what the American worker must consume if a depression is to be avoided, he is not well paid.

Putting aside comparisons for a moment, consider the facts about absolute wages. Not fifteen per cent of the people receiving salaries and wages in this country get as much as two thousand dollars per year. The average weekly wage of an industrial worker in New York State when employment is good is about twenty-seven dollars per week. That means, if employment is better than it usually is the year round, $1,300 for the year. For textile workers it is not above twenty dollars per week, $1,000 per year. Would any of the open shoppers who declaim about the well being of the American worker like to try supporting a family or even his own eloquent self on that wage?

Wages Are Rotten!

But there is the “aristocracy of labor!” Yes, his honor the plumber who makes sixty dollars per week. And if employment is better than it usually is for plumbers the year round, that means about $3,000 per year. How many employers, bankers, Rotary Club members and open shop propagandists would be willing to stand up in one and swear that they consider that a magnificent wage!

Now there is nothing new in what we have written. Most of my readers probably knew these facts before they saw them on this page. There are plenty more such facts ready to hand for anyone who is interested in them. That makes it all the more remarkable that this fairy tale about the high wages of the American worker should apparently have us all hypnotized.

Fellow workers, let us snap out of it! In season and out of season, let us puncture this fairy tale. Let one of the slogans that American Labor carries on its banners be: Wages Are Rotten!

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine with origins in Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933 aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy of left-wing trade unionists across industries. During 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) led by A. J. Muste. James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz were also writers. The orientation of the magazine was industrial unionism, planning, nationalization, and was illustrated with photos and cartoons. With its stress on worker education, social unionism and rank and file activism, it is one of the essential journals of the radical US labor socialist movement of its time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborage/v15n11-nov-1926-LA.pdf