Mary E. Marcy on the high demand for labor combined with the shortage and rising cost of goods as the US entered World War One creating a situation in which workers had increased power, if they only knew they could use it.

‘The High Cost of Labor Power’ by Jack Morton (Mary E. Marcy) from International Socialist Review. Vol. 17 No. 8. February, 1917.

DID you ever notice how wages rise when the cost of living goes up?

Of course, the capitalist class always pulls back like a balky horse and tries hard to force its employes to scrimp along on the old wage scale as long as possible, and then is usually forced to yield to economic necessity–in order to keep men in shape to go to work in the shops, factories and mills.

Just now the workers in America are so greatly in demand to produce commodities which their employers hope to sell at war prices, that the workers could, by displaying a little militant spirit and a little class solidarity, gain a much larger share in the value they produce if it were not for the fact that all Americans are more and more being forced to pay war prices for the necessities themselves.

The wheat crop has partially failed all over the world; the potato crop is only a shadow of its former self, and prunes, and apricots and beans and cereals have been sold in advance to foreign countries, so that we are finding our home supply in greatly reduced circumstances.

Food products and woolen products and leather products this year are falling so far behind the need that the brokers or speculators and manufacturers who have a stock salted away somewhere, are able to ask monopoly prices and get away with them.

Meanwhile our own capitalist class are finding themselves able to reap unheard of profits upon their investments by sending war supplies to the Allies. But in order to make profits upon war supplies the employing class has to have strong healthy workers toiling in the factory, shop, mine and mill. And healthy workers mean well fed, well clothed and well housed men and women.

Investors are feeling inclined to grumble at the unkindness of the Fates. It is unfortunate that profits should be dependent in the first place, upon “that low, shiftless, ignorant” class known as workers, so that just at a time when a thrifty manufacturer, who has managed to save up half a dozen million dollars or so, by hard and honest toil (?)–as we were saying–just when such an overworked manufacturer sees an opportunity of making an “honest 600 per cent upon an investment,” it is unfortunate that the workers should be in such great demand by other employers of labor that a man has to pay “exorbitant wages” if he wants to keep the factory wheels revolving, and the stream of dividends pouring into his own pockets.

And then, to cap the climax, the American food and clothing speculators go out and sell American crops in advance to the Allies, and the inconsiderate South American capitalist sells “his” products to Europe, so that it looks now as though the food supply in America were going to run short before the next harvest.

With the cost of living soaring upward and food actually growing more scarce every day, the poor capitalists in this country are being driven to their wits’ end to devise ways and means for meeting this rising cost, holding their employes and avoiding the bad precedent of paying higher wages.

Just about Christmas time the wise heads of the big industries were called into the private offices of the Big Bosses all over the country to discuss what was to be done about it. The Steel Trust developed a wonderful change of heart after talking over the pernicious activities of the I.W.W. the past year and the expensive strikes that had been pulled off. It developed that other and more serious labor troubles might follow and the Steel Trust, all at once, as it were, became human and decided to “do something voluntarily,” before it was forced, for the steel workers. So a universal 10 per cent to 15 per cent rise in wages was announced.

The Steel Trust stood true to its old creed that it is better to make a workingman believe his employer has given him something than to learn that he has been able to force anything from his “boss.”

A hundred weaker manufacturers and industrial giants in Chicago announced their sudden conversion to the “profit sharing plan.” It developed that their ideas upon the subject in regard to the future were more than hazy. “Of course the movement is only in its infancy;” “we shall have to await business developments,” etc., etc., but these capitalists, one and all, knew that they were going to offer their employes something right down substantial for Christmas. At first it had been the plan to sift out the late comers from the old-timers, those who had slaved for the companies ten, twenty and thirty years, but caution and the experience of less regenerate employers, showed then that wisdom here would surely be the better part of valor and even the girls who had only worked six months in some of the mail order houses got “presents” of twenty and thirty dollars.

The Chicago express companies found the best solution of all for this odious problem of the higher cost of labor power, caused by the increased cost of living. By it they do not establish higher wages against a future reduction of which their employes might go on strike, and yet they have posed as benefactors, have increased the money received by the express workers, and next year they will be able to claim that, owing to decreased business they are unable to afford the munificence of the Christmas of 1916.

The newspapers screamed the glad tidings late in December that employes of the express companies were to receive gifts from the employers ranging from the amount of two to three months’ wages. And the threatened expressmen’s strike was averted. The public learned a little later that these wonderful money Christmas gifts were to be divided into four parts. The workers were to receive one-fourth of the gift on December 25th, another fourth in three months, a third in six, and the balance in nine months.

The expectation of receiving half a month’s wages every three months was calculated to calm the spirit of unrest and rebellion among the workers, to stave off strikes, keep men docile and on the job, and most important of all to meet the high cost of living.

We are afraid the game will work, but if the working class of America only realized it, nobody need be out of work here today. The capitalists are competing with each other for workers. All the workers have to do is to organize, strike and get almost anything they want, because Capital cannot gather in those war billions without the labor power of the working class!

If the workers in the industries decided to all go home an hour earlier every day, now is the time they could make good with these demands. And they could quit another hour earlier two months from now. The workers were never in a better position to wage class warfare in America than they are now!

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v17n08-feb-1917-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf