Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/102

88 We are assured by many persons who speak prominently that the scale of living of the American people has been raised during the last 10 years. The president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America asserts that and the president of the American Federation of Labor proclaims that wage earners will not consent to revert to anything inferior to what they enjoy now. Let us subject these statements, beliefs, or whatever they may be called, to some tests.

If our income, or our wages, expressed in dollars, go up and the prices of the goods and things that we want do not go up we come into the enjoyment of a better scale of living; for obviously we can have more goods and things, and it is that ability that constitutes, or determines, a scale of living.

If, however, the goods that we want are impaired in quality in order that we may obtain them at the same price as formerly we may not be any better off than we used to be. Even may we be in a worse position. Thus, if a man used to earn $6 per day and with a day’s pay obtained a pair of shoes that would last him a year he is in an unchanged economic situation if his wages having been raised to $12 per day he has to pay $12 for the shoes; or if he be offered and buys shoes for $6 that last him only half a year.

The last is a condition that may be overlooked. Yet it is a matter to be seriously considered. We hear from all quarters the comment that “goods are not what they used to be.” Some one examines an old, well-preserved automobile and comments “You can’t get such materials now.’’ Some one else observes a new house in course of erection and says contemptuously that it is even more jerry-built than such houses used to be.