It is well known to those familiar with the situation of other intellectual workers that they find themselves in the same plight as the teachers in every case in which they do not sell their product in a mass-market, but before carrying the argument further I must touch on one more point in connection with the teachers. In another recent report[3] covering 302 colleges with 11,361 faculty members, it is[Pg 183] stated that the average salary paid instructors, assistant or associate professors, and professors was $2,958. This compares with $1,724 in 1914-15. If we take that year as par and accept the usual comparison of the value of the dollar now as 61.7 cents, we find that in purchasing power the present average salary is $1,825, or about six per cent more than eleven years previously. It is evident therefore that the present crisis and deep discontent among intellectual workers is not due, or due only in small part, merely to the depreciated value of money. We must seek the cause elsewhere. It is due in my opinion mainly to two things, both of which derive largely from mass production, namely, a rapidly altered standard and ideal of living, and a vast and equally rapid shift in the economic positions of the various classes of society. Mass production, for the manufacturer, greatly decreases the cost of production, and selling in vast quantities greatly increases profits. There will come a time for almost every product when the inertia of selling it in a market already fairly saturated with it will increase the selling cost to such an extent as may more than equal the decreased cost of production, as is already occurring in certain lines. But meanwhile mass production has created enormous profits. In some cases and to some extent, though much fewer and less than generally assumed, the consumer has shared in these profits through lowered retail prices. The rest of the increased profit has gone in part to the workmen and, in much larger part, to the owners of the plants. In some lines, notably ready-made clothes for men, the prices of which are two and a half times those of 1912, the consumer has not benefited at all. [Pg 184]