VOL. XX

10 Cents a Copy

CONTENTS FOR MARCH, 1923

No. 3

$1.00 a Year

Earned Wage, Not a 'Living' Wage, Should Be Paid Labor...73

The Union Conspiracy in the West Virginia Coal Fields....87

Comment.....

The Things That Are Caesar's.

.90

.92

NOTICE

THE OPEN SHOP REVIEW is published monthly by the National Founders Association and the National Metal Trades Association, jointly, at 29 South La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois.

THE OPEN SHOP REVIEW is mailed as third class matter at Chicago on the fifteenth of month current.

All manuscript submitted is at owner's risk, and same will not be returned unless return postage is enclosed.

Advertising closing date, first of month current. All advertisements are subject to approval of publishers.

"T

HERE are radicals in America who

want to govern without a written constitution. There are still more superradicals who want to govern without any written law. In Russia they have originated a government without either constitution or written laws, and they are now reaping their harvest of bitter regret. Let every man in America who wants the unlimited rule of the majority

Let

-the worst tyranny that God has ever permitted on the surface of the earthproceed to sympathize with the Senator (La Follette) from Wisconsin. every man who believes that there are natural rights and inalienable rights, or 'unalienable rights' as old Thomas Jefferson called them, with which no government under the sun has a right to interfere, stand with-those who are opposed to his position."

-JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS

CHICAGO

MARCH, 1923

Earned Wage, Not a 'Living' Wage, Should Be Paid Labor*

One Must Give More to Receive More, Is Writer's Advice to Workers Who Seek Higher Pay

(By B. C. Forbes)

New York, Nov. 30.

Have you given serious thought to all this talk about "a living wage," "a saving wage," "a minimum wage,” “a starvation wage" and other kinds of wages?

It has been said America is a nation swayed by phrases, by catch-words, by slogans. Most, if not all, phrases and catchwords and slogans and proverbs are half truths, half lies. This subject of wages is so universally important that we ought to go down to its fundamentals and not be content lazily to swallow or reject superficial phrases.

The only wage that can and must be paid, in the long run, is neither the living wage nor the starvation wage, neither the saving wage nor the minimum wage. The only wage that can be paid permanently, and should and must be paid permanently, is the earned wage.

Whether that wage is a living wage or a starvation wage or a saving wage depends more upon workers themselves than upon employers or unions or politicians.

* * * *

Before money can be distributed in wages it must be earned. Wages can't be paid out of empty tills or safes. Wage money can't be drawn out of the air by some miracle. Before cash can be put into pay envelopes it must first be drawn in by the

payer.

How much can be paid out is regulated by how much is pulled in. A company's income is governed largely by its workers' output. A quart can't be extracted from a pint. *Copyright 1922, by B. C. Forbes.