Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1916 — Compulsory Arbitration Badly Needed to Protect 30,000,000 Independent Workers [ARTICLE]

Compulsory Arbitration Badly Needed to Protect 30,000,000 Independent Workers

By CHARLES S. SCOTT of Chicago

I am a firm believer in arbitration and believe it should be enforced by the government. Besides the 360,000 income-tax payers in the United States and 2,000,000 members of the Federation of Labor, there are about 30,000,000 people, small business men, farmers, clerks and helpers, of whom none are any better off than if they were all working for wages. The average amount per worker, for all the manufacturing firms in the United States (as taken from the 1910 United States census figures), dividing the entire earnings of the firms equally among the workers after paying 6 per cent on actual money invested (not watered stock), is $713 a year, without allowing anything for depreciation. The rapid increase of the city population over that of the farm indicates that ifonditions are worse on the farms. * From the above it is easy to see that 2,000,000 union labor men hold up a few thousand capitalists, who in turn shift the raise on ! -o the 30,000,000 independent workers, of whom 20,000,000 earn less than S7OO a year. Many of the union labor men earn more than three times the average wage. I think that an ideal method of arbitration is by the Newlands act, two for the capitalist, two for the union, and two for the consumer.