HIGH SALARIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5347, 5 November 1928, Page 1

HIGH SALARIES.

QUESTION OF EARNING POWER. DEPENDENT ON VIEWPOINT. Dean Inge’s assertion that high salaries are never, earned is, of course, an. exaggeration. If, however, we are; to accept the statement wholehear.tedlq we must, of course,- be prepared to regard our hard-headed) business folk as nothing less than benign philanthropists anxious to pay huge salaries for no other purpose than a kind-hearted desire, to enable Mr Smith or Miss Blank to marry, own a thousand-pqunfa. car, live in ten thousand-pound house, and! eat expensive food (says the “Dominion”).

To take a humble case. A year or. sc ago we were all ,thrilled at the idea of a woman earning the; huge sum. of £20,000 a, year in connection with the sale of such an unimportant thing as corsets. Hj was clear frqm the story that this woman, who had built up a huge trade for her firm, would have been cheap at double the salary. To tajcq anjother instance, from the huge salaries paidl by some of the leading oil concerns: It has been calculated that the salaries, some of them funning into four and. five figures, work out at a small fraction of one per cent, on thq totaj yearly millionis created by these salaries.

Lt; is possible for highly-paid people to be receiving more than they are wbrth, but on the- whole the laws of supply and demand are just as ruthless with human! beings and their pay as they were with thq mo,re ineirt commodities of everyday life.