subjects are discussed at more length in other chapters of this book.
There ought normally to be a gradual increase in the proportion of the national income accruing to labor, for as production increases by virtue of improvements in methods, the share of capital being limited by competition, there becomes available a greater dividend for the wage earners; but the natural increase in their percentage would be neither so great nor so rapid as during the last 10 years, nor should it come out of a production that has swollen but little and during the last few years has actually diminished. Those very conditions inherently betray the unbalance in the existing economic situation.
It is useful to pursue this analysis by examining the position of the labor in a major industry with respect to the entire national income. We may well select railway transportation for the reason that it is a major industry for which more complete data exist than for any other. Moreover it is an entirely unionized industry, wherein may be seen the effects of economic restrictions imposed by the labor unions, which in this instance are supported by Congressional enactments. Even now railway labor is clamoring for higher wages on the ground that they are needful in order to meet the high cost of living.
In a consideration of these demands the first essential is to determine the fact as to whether there be prosperity or not in the United States at the present time. If there be, as is represented by some publicists, labor has surely the right to participate in it, and any case against the railway brotherhoods will be weakened. If on the other hand there be not general prosperity, but
