Word: months
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...friends of union labor saw to it that union hourly wage scales, as prevailing in different sections of the U. S., were provided for skilled workmen. Thus, if union carpenters were getting $1.75 an hour in private employment, carpenters working for WPA got $1.75. Result: to earn the maximum monthly wage of $92.89 allotted to them, they need work only 53 hours a month. The unions' interest in thus preventing Unemployment from breaking the market for their labor was only natural. But WPA's prevailing-wage provision had other effects. Testifying to Congress prior to this year...
...Skilled workers, having earned their Federal money in a few hours, could secretly work and earn elsewhere during the month (at any wage levels they chose). This aroused jealousy, criticism...
Administrator Harrington asked Congress for a "security wage" up to $96, based on regional living costs and he said, "It is my recommendation that persons employed on projects of the WPA be required to work 130 hours per month and that the earnings of such persons be on a monthly basis . . . that substantially the present national average labor cost [to WPA] be maintained...
Obviously that meant more hours of work for the same pay, and pay-per-hour far below "prevailing" (union) rates for skilled labor. Administrator Harrington argued this would be "an important factor in determining need." WPA jobs, calling for 130 hours of work per month, would become less popular. Incentive to get private employment, and hold it, would be enhanced...
...Last month, a few days before he was formally received among the "forty immortals," Charles Maurras was challenged to a duel. Challenger was Jean Prouvost, publisher of Paris-Soir, whom Maurras had charged with "flattering the basest instincts of the masses." Maliciously courteous, Publisher Prouvost offered, in view of Maurras' extreme age and deafness, to fight any proxy he might name. Academician Maurras declined the challenge, but not because of old age. "So far as my age is concerned," said he, "M. Prouvost can rest assured that it has left me all my strength. But I shall not employ...