Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

That is to say, jobs being now scarce, men want to keep their jobs instead of being “laid off,” as the phrase is. This of itself is a wholesome effect of hard times.

The labor problem is one of peculiar difficulty, and substantial, permanent improvement in trade and securities will not be seen until there has been a complete readjustment of commodities, prices and wages in accordance with the altered conditions. To insure steady work for labor, and a fair profit for employers, why would it not be wisdom for the labor union leaders to agree to a contract to last for the coming four months only, consenting to a reduction of 20 per cent. in wages?

Readjustment is a harmonizing process, and harmony promotes recovery and the full development of our powers and resources. This is what the business situation imperatively calls for now, and all business men should do their best to foster it, and so work together as a unit, for in unity there is strength. We have an example of it in our United States.

The cotton goods industry in New England has, I know, been much more severely depressed by the crisis than was at first thought possible; but, fortunately, the losses sustained will be the more easily borne because of the large profits of previous years. Notwithstanding the cuts made in standard goods, the demand for them is still abnormally light, and hence stocks are accumulating in the face of the heavy decrease in production.

No wonder, therefore, that those most intimately concerned are more or less at sea as to how long this depression will continue, and what the results will be. They see certain grades of goods that were selling at 8⅜ cents a yard just before the panic now being offered at 5½ cents, and this is an object lesson that tends to make even the most optimistic of them a trifle blue for the time being. But this is precisely the time when courage and confidence in the situation are most needed. I give you all credit, however, for being equal to the occasion.

With eighty-five millions of our own people to clothe—to say nothing of the rest of mankind—manufactured cotton products will before long be in demand again at rising prices, for civilization demands clothes in hot weather as well as cold.

Meanwhile, endurance is called for, and will doubtless not be found wanting, except where special circumstances impose limits to it, and we all know that patience is a virtue.

Recovery to normal conditions will, of course, be gradual, and it is better that it should be so, to ensure permanence. In the meantime, it will be a relief to the dry goods trade when sales are no longer extensively made by cutting under quoted prices more or less sharply.

The bold, and even aggressive, action of the American Federation of Labor in going to Washington and making demands upon Congress, and criticizing not only the laws but the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, puts a new and serious face on the old contest between Labor and Capital. It arouses some apprehension as to the lengths to which Labor will go, and how far its political influence may enable it to accomplish its purposes. Politicians are ever ready to show subserviency to Labor, merely for the purpose of gaining votes for themselves.

We all want to see justice done to Labor, but we also want to guard against injustice being done to Capital by Labor, and Labor’s resistance to a reduction of wages to correspond in some degree with the decline in the earnings and profits of those employing it, is a practical injustice to all those outside the ranks of organized labor.