Download book Electric Railway Journal, 1922 (Classic Reprint)

Download book Electric Railway Journal, 1922 (Classic Reprint)

Electric Railway Journal, 1922 (Classic Reprint) by McGraw-Hill

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Author: McGraw-Hill
Number of Pages: 758 pages
Published Date: 27 Sep 2015
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Publication Country: United States
Language: English
ISBN: 9781330510490
File Name: Electric.Railway.Journal,.1922.(Classic.Reprint).pdf
Download Link: Electric Railway Journal, 1922 (Classic Reprint)
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Excerpt from Electric Railway Journal, 1922 Under the transportation act, the Railroad Labor Board, in determining what is a just and reasonable wage, is directed to take into consideration the following seven factors; 1. The scale of wages paid for similar kinds of work in other industries. 2. The relation between wages and the cost of living. 3. The hazards of employment. 4. The training and skill required. 5. The degree of responsibility. 6. The character and regularity of the employment, and 7. Inequalities of increases in wages or treatment, the result of previous wage orders or adjustments. Of these, the last five relate primarily to the conditions of railway employment, while the first two represent between them quite different bases for determining wages in any industry. When results derived from them do not coincide, greater weight must be given either to one plan or the other. How and to what extent to do this was the problem which faced the Labor Board in its decision on the question of the wages of the maintenance of way men this week. Both factors were considered by the board, which wisely declares it lays greater stress on the first basis or that of the scale of wages paid for similar kinds of work in other industries. Its decision also points out that an increase of 2 cents in the wages of the trackmen is thereby warranted, whereas under the cost of living plan there would be no increase because there had been no increase in the cost of living. After all, the law of supply and demand is the one which practically will have to be controlling in any rising wage market, whether a company or labor board wishes to consider it or not. If men can secure higher wages elsewhere than in the case under arbitration, they will not stay on their old jobs simply because figures can be produced to show that they are receiving a "living wage." The law of supply and demand is also very much simpler to apply. Evidence varies as to the most fundamental facts of the cost of living method, namely, the average number of dependents and the average number of workers in a family, and a still greater problem is to decide the standard of living and the cost of it. One housekeeper can live well and save on a sum which would not be sufficient for bare living to another. It is indeed well that the United States Labor Board had the conviction and courage to explode the appealing theory that the "cost of living" should be considered as a main factor in establishing wages before the hold of this theory upon industry should become any more firm. The weakness of this method is demonstrated by the efforts of labor so to increase the standard of living that wages should continue to climb despite the downward trend of prices of necessities. If the living-wage plan were sound it would have carried wages down just as it carried them up, and labor's experts would not have had to devise new standards of living to counteract natural laws. The standard of living should improve, to be sure, but not so rapidly as to wreck the industry in the process. Incidentally, the increase in wages of the trackmen granted in Chicago and the increase in the steel wages made last summer call attention again to the growing scarcity in the labor market, particularly in the class called "common labor." In the past the greater part of the supply in the country of this class of labor has come from immigrants, particularly in recent years from Italy and other southern European nations. This supply has been largely cut off, owing to the present immigration law, and with the present increased business activity the lack of men to do unskilled work will seriously hamper industrial expansion hoped for in the early future. This does not mean that there need be a return to the old immigration limitations, which were largely educational. Some change, however, should be made to admit those who are able, by their entrance, to inc

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