The False Doctrine of 'Supply and Demand'
A labor manifesto argues that using the 'cheapest man' to set wage standards is a race to the bottom that threatens the integrity of community and family life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It has been a pet phrase of those who favor low wages that 'the law of supply and demand' must, in the natural order of events, control the labor market—if there are three men for the one job, then the one who will work for the smallest sum is properly entitled to the situation. Civilization advances as the people move forward. All that retards progress is a handicap. If living conditions are to have a standard set by the cheapest man, whose individual needs may be of such a nature as to preclude the home life of a community from following its normal way, then the people of the era will suffer and the backward tendency become more marked as time goes on. Trades unionism resents the doctrine and in so doing is proving of service to all. There are recognized among thinking men and women certain requisites necessary to enable our present day civilization to be tolerable. One of these is a wage sufficient to provide for the home and those living therein. In objecting to the 'law of supply and demand' we are making no false move, for it is based primarily on greed and the desire to save or make money even at the expense of the community life.
“It is impossible to measure human life by the yardstick of the dry goods store or the weight of the grocer's commodities.”
This 1909 argument strikes a familiar chord in modern Everett, where the tension between a market-driven 'supply and demand' economy and the actual cost of sustaining a dignified home life remains the primary source of civic anxiety.
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