Those who defend the present wage schedules are forever telling us that they do not increase the cost of living because of the increased output per man and the increased savings in cost due to new machinery and mass-production. Much of this, of course, is sheer bunkum. For the housekeeper who pays a cook anywhere from $75 to $100 as compared with $25 to $30 fifteen years ago there is a clear loss in the family budget with no increased output whatever. The cook gets the full benefit of all the labor-saving devices, and the mistress pays for these and the advanced wages as well. When the other day I had some bookshelves put up and paid two of the stupidest workmen it has ever been my luck to encounter $12 a day each there was no compensating advantage whatever. I am told I might have got it done for less had I taken the trouble to find a “scab” workman out of work. In the first place I do not know where to find one and in the second place it would not have been necessary fifteen years ago. I could then have gone to any union shop and had the job done reasonably. No, a factory may increase wages and lower costs, but the ordinary householder cannot do so in all that[Pg 39] affects the running of his home and family. The increase of wages, in many cases to prohibitive levels, is the heaviest single burden, except rent, to the man of moderate means to-day. But to a great extent the increase in living cost is due also to the increase in the number of things. We live so fast and heedlessly that we seldom consider how much of our present annual expense is made up of costs incurred for things that few of us used fifteen or twenty years ago. Of course the automobile bulks largest in this respect as a single item. In the well-to-do New York suburb where I lived for some years before the War, comparatively few people had cars. Most of the commuters of the class then spending $8000 to $10,000 a year—the equivalent of $15,000 to $20,000 to-day—always walked to and from the station, taking a hack in bad weather. To-day there are over twenty million cars in the country, or about one to every family. If one examines the real-estate advertisements one finds that now a small modern house will have its vacuum cleaner, its washing machine, elaborate wiring with outlets all over the place, its cedar closets, electric refrigerator, radio, automatic heat-regulator, its several bathrooms, and a garage for one, and not seldom two cars, to mention some of what are considered essentials. I do not question the comfort and convenience of at least most of these things, but their steady multiplication adds heavily to the burden of the man who has to pay for them in order to maintain his family according to the “American standard.” For all with incomes of from $5000 to $50,000 the burden is almost equally felt, for standards of expense are in proportion to income and annually mounting. [Pg 40] II