ABSTRACT

Labor's objection to the fixing of wages even according to a comparatively liberal standard, is that it provides a status for the worker, like the social systems of the eighteenth and earlier centuries, instead of maintaining for him an unlimited opportunity for advancement. The Federation, therefore, has definitely rejected "the living wage". The practice of fixing wages solely on a basis of the cost of living is a violation of the whole philosophy of progress and civilization and. furthermore, is a violation of sound economic theory and is utterly without logic or scientific support of any kind. Labor sees no necessary limit to a steadily advancing wage standard except that it must have a reasonable relation to the total product of American industry. At annual convention at Atlantic City in 1925, the American Federation of Labor launched "a new wage policy". This new wage policy was widely misunderstood or wilfully misinterpreted in the public press.