Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/43

Rh last summer’s work that there was no man of this squad who in any week worked the full 44 hours that the union permitted. The war merely emphasized this tendency. Higher wages afforded greater opportunity for loafing.

The impairment in the efficiency of labor in 1916-20 was contemporaneously estimated with widely variable figures. A rather common expression was that efficiency had fallen to 60 to 70 per cent of the pre-war rate. Professor Friday in ‘‘Profits, Wages and Prices” said that there seemed to be a general opinion among employers and managers that the efficiency of labor in 1920 was as low as 60 per cent of its 1914 level. Those entertaining such a supposition seem to be unconscious that it does not agree with the notion of increased production coincidentally, for the number of men employed did not increase in any ratio commensurate with such an estimate of decrease in efficiency. In fact the results were widely variable and no generalization for industry as a whole is possible, but for individual industries we can get fairly accurate ideas of what happened.

Things were probably at the worst among the builders, considering major industries. The following figures reported by the Associated Employers of Indiana relate only to bricklayers, but they illustrate conditions prevailing in other branches of the building industry.

Hourly Daily Brick Coat of laying Year rate rate latd per day 1,000 bricks 1909 $0.55 $4.40 1100 $4.00 1916 0.65 5.20 900 5.77 1918 0.80 6.40 614 10.42 1919 1.00 8.00 587 13.63

1920 1.25 10.00 541 18.50