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BEST BROADCASTS OF 1938-39
investigating most of the major industries of the covmtry, such as the oil industry, automobiles, telephone and telegraph, utilities, and railroads. These are typical big business industries. What have they achieved ? Do they make a good product? Is it sold at a fair price? Does labor receive a a fair wage ?
Well, every American workingman knows that the highest wages and the best working conditions are foimd in the large corporations. If the wage and hour bill is passed, the effect on America’s big business corporations will be negligible, because their wage levels are already above the minimum suggested in the bill. Also, it seems a little ironical for government officials to be lecturing big business on the desirability of low price and large volume, because this was the technique which was developed and made possible only by mass production and distribution tmder the leadership of big business.
The oil industry, for example, is one in which there are a number of very large companies of the kind Mr. Jackson dislikes. Yet anyone who has driven a car abroad knows that the system of service stations which we take for granted here is duplicated in very few places outside our borders. Although nearly half of what we pay for gasoline represents the government tax, we can still buy it for less than in almost any other place in the world. And, of course, no country pays refinery workers as high a wage as they receive here. In fact, the average hourly wage rates in refineries have increased more than 50 per cent in the past 15 years, while the gasoline price, excluding the tax, has declined by nearly the same amount.
More than 50 per cent of all telephones in the world are in the United States, and they cost the consumer a smaller part of his income than anywhere else.
During the 4 years ended in 1932, the American automobile industry lost 80 per cent of its business. In i year the industry’s net loss was half the cost of the Panama Canal. Yet during that 4-year period the industry made a low priced car which was better than the highest priced car in 1926. The public got a better car for considerably less money; and the reduction in price did not come out of the pockets of labor, because automobile labor continued to be among the highest paid of all manufacturing industries. Here again, it was big business that made the achievement
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