Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/179

Rh factories and public improvements required by the growing population. Since the war the percentage of saving appears to have been less, which is reflected in shortage of houses and inadequacy of means for transportation. Even if physical production remains undiminished, in proportion to the population, failure to make adequate savings is bound to have adverse economic consequences to the people. There is reason to fear that physical production is falling behind the rate of increase in the population and that this is a potent factor in maintaining a high level of prices for commodities.

The labor of a human being is not a commodity nor an article of commerce, but labor, like any service and like any commodity, is subject to the economic law of supply and demand. If workmen fail to produce as much as they can, thereby diminishing the supply of commodities, they curtail the divisible supply and thereby raise prices and injure themselves.

No person has an inherent right to a living wage nor to an equal division of the national produce. Nobody has any right to more than he earns and nature has endowed men so differently that some are able to earn more than others. The maximum that can be divided is the amount of the national produce and if the division thereof does not afford a living wage there is no other source whence it may be obtained. If, in such a condition, one group of workers is successful in securing for itself a living wage, that must inevitably be at the expense of other groups of workers.

The farmers and their families, who comprise nearly one-third of the American people, are under no illusion respecting their living wage being anything different