Source: The New York Daily Call, August 20th, 1909. Vol. 2, No. 199.
Public Domain: This work is free of any copyright restrictions.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, July, 2023.
Editor of The Call:
I have read with pleasure your editorial comment in today’s issue on Mr. “Gompers’ Vain Boast.” I want to call your attention, however, to one factor omitted by you in enumerating the factors which contributed to prevent a reduction of the wages received by organized labor during the recent time. That factor is the policy of our trust magnates of “standing pat” on the high prices reached during the boom period. That policy was vastly more profitable to the magnates than would have been a reduction in the wages of the workingmen, and they needed the maintenance of the wage standard in their efforts to withstand the clamor of the “public” for a reduction of prices in order to help the “revival of business.” They were simply playing the workingmen against the consumers at large, a game so often, and so successfully, played by them before. As to whether the workingmen were material gainers thereby is involved in some doubt (I believe out of consideration the moral gain involved in the maintenance of a level of wages once secured), but that they masters have gained thereby, is beyond any doubt.
Fraternally yours,
L. B. Boudin.
New York, Aug. 18, 1909.
Last updated on 29 July 2023