Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1911 — Lower Wage Earner’s Standard of Living [ARTICLE]

Lower Wage Earner’s Standard of Living

By LORA BELL

Isn’t it about time that we stopped demanding of American labor that it lower its’standard of living to that of the foreign iaboref? If bean soup and rye bread is a better diet than meat and white all means argue for bean soup and rye bread, but recommend them as foods for all classes and not simply for the workingman so that he can live more cheaply. Start the reform where people have got farthest away from the simple food idea—in the high priced clubs and hotels and the millionaires’ homes. That is where it is most needed.

There is no reason why a workingman should be forced to eat food that is distasteful to him simply because it is cheap, while the more fortunate members of society can live on the choicest the workers produce. Why shouldn’t the workingmen have yarpets on their floors? Who is better entitled to them? Would any of us have carpets, or Axminster or Persian rugs, either, or floors of any kind to lay them on, if these workingmen did not produce them? And as to their filling their rooms with flimsy gimyraeks it surely is better for them io satisfy their craving for beauty in this way than to stifle it entirely. Let us remember that society has not s«pplied the toiler with an education to appreciate Mona Lisas or cloisonne vases, or the purses to indulge such tastes.

But it is surely a more hopeful sign that he wishes to beautify his home in some way than if he were.satisfied with bare walls and bare floors. What we need is not ways to lower the wage earner’s standard of living but ways to distribute more equitably the wealth he produces so that he can develop and gratify higher tastes. The producer of wealth is entitled to the best there is and it is time we found some way to keep that best from going to the idlers.