HIGHER WAGES IN BRITAIN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1646, 5 December 1916, Page 4

HIGHER WAGES IN BRITAIN.

In an article in lh,- Prn is ii Weekly, Sir Leo. Chiozza Money points out that Ihe number of income-tax payees in Britain lias doubled, partly because of the lowering of the exemption limit from fltil) to rlot) a year, but chiclly because of the great rise in earnings through the war. European civilisations, he says, arc siillering in respect of wages —and many other things —I he customs and standards inherited from a poverty-stricken past. Xew countries like America and Australia, on the other hand, are free from low-wage traditions; their standards of remuneration were set in countries where natural opportunities were enormous, and where there was not sullieient labour to develop them. When this war broke out, wages in the I idled Stales were from two to four times as great as in Britain. Bricklayers, carpenters, mechanics, printers and other skilled men earned anything from £7 to £l.O a week, while unskilled labourers earned from £4 (o £7. When allowance was made for a greater cost of living, these earnings were enormously higher limn ours. The war has shown Iha 1 similar earnings are quite possible in our society, and we must not imagine that they are not possible in peace. I wrote much on this before the wav, and everything that has happened since has encouraged me to assert that yon cannot obtain a high standard of productivity without a high standard of wages.