to this increase in the cost of materials and labor, is just as surely causing other classes of wage earners untold hardships and rendering them more and more apprehensive of the future. The “white-collar” element of our wage earners was never, relatively, so poorly paid. A silent and bloodless revolution is taking place in this country, the consequences of which appear to accrue to one class of labor, to the disadvantage and discouragement of another class. The benefits derived by mechanics and laboring men in the building trades, through higher wages, must be paid by wage earners in other industries by higher rents and higher costs of living generally because of the high cost of building construction.
Consider, now, if you please that the City of New York has about 5 per cent of the total population of the United States and that its total number of dwellings is about 1,000,000 out of the 20,000,000 in the country other than those on farms. A fairly large statistical sample, is it not? Municipal transportation in New York is strained to the breaking point. The whole system of railway traffic in the country is on the verge of cracking. During recent years the railway companies have been spending only four or five hundred million dollars per annum on their plant. They need to spend a billion dollars per annum in terms of 1913 dollars for mere maintenance. Considering these conditions is not the chatter about unparalleled national prosperity idle and ill-conceived?
How is the inevitable economic readjustment going to come about? Frankly, I do not know. Four years ago I thought it was going to come about through common-sense, through patriotic and intelligent leadership. Up to a year ago I thought that things were working in that way, although temporizing factors had come into evidence. From far back I had foreseen 1922 as a year of great labor troubles. I expected that they would end by putting us well ahead in our necessary readjustment. As you know, they did not
