Wages, Bankers, Chambermen

As an element of Depression, wage cuts, past and future, continued last week to engage the perplexed attention of businessmen throughout the land. During March 335 pay reductions averaging 10% and affecting 43,500 workers were reported to the U. S. Labor Department as compared with 26 cuts in the same month last year. March also failed to show any general increase in employment over February though manufacturing industries did hire about 1% more workers. In Manhattan industrialists gathered secretly to discuss the "advisability" of "wage adjustments," departed with the feeling that "moderate reductions" were inevitable. The textile, steel and oil industries braced themselves for further wage retrenchments.

Meanwhile in Augusta, Ga., last week met the executive council of the American Bankers Association. Chief speaker was Rome Charles Stephenson, the association's president, who undertook to defend bankers from the widespread charge that they were the prime agitators for wage cuts (TIME, April 13). He protested that the wages of Capital have been reduced by sliced dividends, lower interest rates. "No banker reduced these wages of money as a matter of personal desire. . . . Anyone knows that wage levels are controlled by impersonal economic principles. . . . I'm not saying wage reductions should be made but it would be a very questionable act of stewardship if an industry attempted to keep wages or other costs at any arbitrary level at the expense of the capital funds of the business. If any banker reaches a conclusion that wage cuts are inevitable, he is fully within his rights to say so. He is merely interpreting impersonal events and is not expressing personal desires of himself or his supposed class."

Next week at Atlantic City will convene the U. S. Chamber of Commerce to discuss the state of industry. Ready for its consideration was a carefully prepared report against increased Federal taxes, extrava- gant public building programs, application of all the sinking fund allotment and foreign interest payments to public debt retirement. This meeting Michigan's millionaire Senator Couzens last week viewed with loud alarm. In a sarcastic statement he declared that the business men meeting in the "Rose Rooms" or the "Pompeian Rooms" of Atlantic City hotels would doubtless resolve against any interference with their affairs by the U. S. Government. To this Senator Couzens retorted that unless Business, as represented by its national chamber, did something concrete to relieve unemployment and contribute to industrial security, Congress would be forced to step in and do its job for it. Excerpts from the Couzens statement:

If Business is insistent upon running the Government let them provide ways and means so that all our citizens will have an adequate income. . . . They will then not find any necessity for Government interference with business. . . . Questions of Unemployment insurance, old age pensions, the regulation of industry do not arise in Congress unless there is a great need. Issues are not raised in Congress out of thin air. . . . Congress will not provide for unemployment or old age insurance if industry does not create the need. . . . The public's patience has already been exhausted.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.