844 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



is wringing more and more production out of its workers, and more and more 

 profit, as the table below shows: 



Sales volume per worker has risen steadily since 1941. The equally steady rise 

 in profit per worker was interrupted only briefly when, in 1946, the company forced 

 its employees into a strike. Sales per worker rose 57 percent between 1941 and 

 1948; profit per worker, 49 percent. 



Other figures published by the company show even more clearly how its work- 

 ers — whose production has made possible ever-higher sales and profits — have just 

 as steadily received a smaller and smaller share of the total receipts. 



In 1946 the share of receipts going to emploj^ees was 40 percent — in 1947 it was 

 36 percent — and in 1948 it was only 34 percent. This occurred despite wage in- 

 creases and despite the fact that there was an average of 94,700 employees in 1948, 

 compared to 85,400 in 1947 and 74,300 in 1946. 



Even more striking is this: While 57,400 employees received 35 percent of total 

 receipts in 1941, 94,641 employees received only 34 percent of the receipts in 1948. 

 In a 7-year period in which FE-CTO succeeded in raising hourly earnings 92.6 

 percent (again according to the company's own figures), the share of company 

 receipts going to employees actually declined 1 percent. One percent less is going 

 to employees with each employee producing 57 percent more doUar volume and 

 the number of employees up 66 percent. 



What does this mean? Simply that workers' wages are not keeping pace with 

 their increased production. The IHC worker is steadily losing ground while the 

 company piles up more and more profit at his expense. 



THE FARMER 



Exorbitant and unjustifiable are the only words for IHC's price policy. Be- 

 tween 1941 and the end of 1948, farm-machine prices were jacked up again and 

 again. By early 1949 the farmer was forced to pay 60 percent more for farm im- 

 plements and 72 percent more for trucks than in 1941. 



IHC propagandists attempt to build a case for their price policy by comparing 

 Harvester price increases with others since 1941. Conveniently overlooked are 

 the two most relevant considera,tions: that Harvester prices, monopoly-controlled, 

 were already at high levels in 1941, and that increases since then were based on 

 greed, not need. 



One example shows this clearly. Despite IHC's frequent attempts to pin the 

 blame for its price policy on the backs of its workers, the United States Govern- 

 ment itself, some time ago, exploded the myth that high wages are responsible for 

 high prices. In its eighteenth quarterly report the Office of Price Administration 

 showed how industry raised prices far above levels necessary to offset any wage 

 increases. Adjusting the figure to Harvester, the 9.4 percent increa.se in hourly 

 earnings between 1947 and 1948 could have been offset by a 2-percent price in- 

 crease. Instead, Harvester boosted farm machine prices 20 percent and truck 

 prices 18 percent over already towering 1947 levels. 



According to the company's own report, the cost of wage and salary increases 

 in 1948 was "about $10 million." Yet price increases during 1948 amounted, on 

 all Harvester products, to a grand total of 88}^ million dollars. That was more 

 than eight times the amount necessary to cover the cost of wage and salary in- 

 creases during the year. 



Not high wages but pure and simple profiteering robbed millions of dollars from 

 farmers' pockets at a time when their desperate need for farm machines made 

 them helpless in the face of IHC's greed for profits. 



THE STOCKHOLDER 



This is the one group for which profits have actually meant progress — and lots 

 of it. Yet even here company propagandists hide the real truth. 



