DEPENDENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19443, 31 October 1925, Page 17 (Supplement)

DEPENDENTS

WAGES AND THE FAMILY Various schemes for supplementing wages in accordance with the number of dependents on the worker have been developed in Europe, and the subject is receiving increasing attention in all dustrial countries. One of the first facts disclosed by examination of the system of basing wages on the average family is that single and childless workers receive a surplus at the expense of the children in families larger than the adop cd standard. Conditions n the United States, where wages are high, have been investigated by Professor Paul Douglas, of Chicago University. •“ Having occasion some three years ago to work over the amount and distribution of the national income, I was struck by its relative, scantiness •1 the great difficulty which there would be of paying to all the wage that was commonly advocated” (i.e., enough to maintain a “standard” family of fivoL he snvs. “This mystified mo until further investigation disclosed that only a small percentage of the male workers actually had families of five to support, and that the vast majority had fewer than four .dependents. To pay all workers enough to maintain a family of five would indeed mean saddling industry with the maintenance of over four million fictitious wives fend children.”