"Standard of living" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... resulting from immigration. The labor supply coming from countries of denser population and with low standards of living creates, in some occupations, an abnormally low level of wages and prices. Children cannot be born in American homes and raised on the American standard of living cheaply enough to maintain at such low wages a continuous supply of laborers. Many industries and branches of industry in America are thus parasitical A condition essentially pathological has come to be looked upon as normal. The commercial ideal imposes itself ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... self-support is an arbitrary standard fixed on no certain grounds; and progress towards self-support is simply a progress towards a line which the foreigner prescribes. Just as each father among us here in England, according to his class and standard of living, fixes a standard for his son, saying, "When he earns so much he will be able to maintain himself," so the society, or the individual missionary, fixes the standard for converts. In this case, the foreigner insisted on the salary for the pastor, he created the building, ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... ranks of the professions or in stations of responsibility. They held large lands, and in the almost feudal creed of the times they gave large services in return. The curse of politics had not yet reached this land of born politicians. Quietly, smoothly, yet withal keyed to a high standard of living, the ways of this old community, as of these two representative families, went on with little change from ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... control diseases and evils due to bad teeth. The rich that one dentist can help are able to pay for his good taste, his neat attendants, his automobile, his club dues, his vacations at fashionable resorts, his hours without work, his standard of living. All of these things advertise him, just as hospital appointments and social position may and do advertise successful physicians. The patients of moderate means that one dentist can treat cannot afford to pay for rent, time disengaged, and indirect advertising. Either they must ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... growing financial opportunities, however, Cowperwood had also grown very liberal in what might be termed his standard of living. Certain young art dealers in Philadelphia, learning of his artistic inclinations and his growing wealth, had followed him up with suggestions as to furniture, tapestries, rugs, objects of art, and paintings—at first the American and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... millions of the distressed and unfortunate of other lands and climes, they have no right to carry their hospitality one step beyond the line where American institutions, the American rate of wages, the American standard of living are brought into serious peril. Our highest duty to charity and to humanity is to make this great experiment here, of free laws and educated labor, the most triumphant success that can possibly be attained. ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... poverty of the Indian people is now greater, and that the famines are more frequent and severe than in former dynasties, is the outstanding instance of the rank growth. Neither the allegation of greater poverty nor the causes of the acknowledged low standard of living have been studied except in the fashion of party politicians. Another of the ideas, as widely current, is that every ton of rice or wheat exported is an injury to the poor. A third is that the payments made in Britain by the Government of ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... produce the articles necessary for its subsistence, such as food, clothing, and shelter, to an extent three times as great, with these agencies, as it could produce without them. Hence it appears, that, if the people of the loyal States could return to the standard of living that prevailed fifty years ago, the amount of their production would be sufficient to subsist not only themselves, but twice as many more in addition. To accomplish this, they would have, indeed, to devote themselves more to the production ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... This possibility shows at once the somewhat unreal nature of the accusation. Provincialism, like vulgarity, is a term that defies exact explanation. It is the indefinite and, therefore, unanswerable charge that men constantly bring against those whose standard of living and thinking is different from their own. It depends upon the point of view of the speaker full (p. 165) as much as upon the conduct and opinions of those spoken of. It changes as manners change. Nations not only impute it to one another, but even to themselves at different periods of their ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... personal motive which drives every man in his place to an aggressive and conquering policy toward the limiting conditions of human life. Affection for wife and children is also the greatest motive to social ambition and personal self-respect—that is, to what is technically called a "high standard of living." ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... extensive and more frequent foreign conquests added to the volume of slave labor in a market already glutted and reduced the price of slaves. Against this super-abundant cheap slave labor, free labor could compete only by reducing its standard of living and thus deepening the abyss of poverty. At the other end of the social arc, the rich were able to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves who provided the energy needed to carry on the complex life of Roman civilization. As the Roman world expanded, the abyss widened, deepened ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... "dismal" element in the early political economy, and yet, as stated by its author, it revealed the possibility of a comfortable future for the working class. One might look with cheerfulness on every threatening influence it described if he could be sure that the so-called "standard of living" on which everything depends would rise. The difficulty lay in the fact that the teaching afforded no evidence that it would thus rise. The common impression of readers was that it was destined to remain stationary and that too at a low level. The workmen ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... hand-looms for themselves now went into the factories and worked the machine-looms, not for themselves, but for the capitalist owners. Furthermore, little children went to work on the machine-looms, at lower wages, and displaced the men. This made hard times for the men. Their standard of living fell. They starved. And they said it was all the fault of the machines. Therefore, they proceeded to break the machines. They did not succeed, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... ask, for what reason should wealth be regarded as a matter for serious pursuit (1) in a community where, partly by a system of equal contributions to the necessaries of life, and partly by the maintenance of a common standard of living, the lawgiver placed so effectual a check upon the desire of riches for the sake of luxury? What inducement, for instance, would there be to make money, even for the sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... found if one knows just where to look for them, but the later examples all fall within the period that we are discussing. It may be objected that this is the luxury of printing, not its everyday necessity, and this objection must be allowed; but luxuries are a powerful factor in elevating the standard of living, and this is as true of print as of food and dress. It must be confessed that an unforeseen influence made itself felt early in the generation under discussion, that of William Morris and his Kelmscott Press. Morris's types began and ended in the Gothic or Germanic spirit, and ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... established in the interest of labor would have excluded all immigrants accustomed to a low standard of living. But as a matter of fact the immigration of cheap foreign labor was actively encouraged by the employers in whose interest the high tariff on foreign goods was maintained. The efforts of the wage-earning class to secure for themselves some of ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... not improved him. True, he wore better clothes, had learned slightly better manners, and spoke better English. As a gambler and a man-trampler he had developed remarkable efficiency. Also, he had become used to a higher standard of living, and he had whetted his wits to razor sharpness in the fierce, complicated struggle of fighting males. But he had hardened, and at the expense of his old-time, whole-souled geniality. Of the essential refinements ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... tent sheltered them most of the year. Indeed, some tribes, such as the Chandalar, lived in their skin tents the year round. Now an ill-ventilated and very commonly overcrowded cabin shelters them most of the year. It is true that the cabins are constantly improving and the standard of living within them is constantly rising. The process is slow, despite all urgings and warnings, and overcrowding and lack of ventilation ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Committee of very expert investigators in New York which made a careful inquiry into the relation of wages to the standard of living. They were not Socialists, these gentlemen, or I should not submit their testimony. I am anxious to base my case against our present social system upon evidence that is not in any way biased in favor of Socialism. Dr. Lee K. Frankel was ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... just out of college, who, like himself at one time, are on their way upward in the game. He is rarely a young man; generally is a man of wide reading; is a man respected in his community not for what he knows as an engineer, but for the standard of living which he is able to set by virtue of his income. Besides the sources of revenue which are his, and as I have set forth above, he is sought by technical editors to contribute to magazines powerful in his field, and this is a pleasurable source of income to any man in any walk of life. ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... down the rising tide of socialism, he preaches greater meekness and benevolence to the capitalists. No longer may they claim the right to run their own business, to beat down the laborer's standard of living for the sake of increased profits, to dictate terms of employment to individual workers, to wax righteously indignant when organized labor takes a hand in their business. No longer may the capitalist say "my" business, or even think "my" business; ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... America, as a whole, has felt the adverse effects of this war. There is not a considerable village, much less a considerable city, not a merchant, not a captain of industry in the United States that has not so felt it. It is plainly evident that by the progressive dearness of money, the lower standard of living that will result in Europe, the effect on immigration, and other processes which I will touch upon at greater length later, any temporary stimulus which a trade here and there may receive will be more than ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... generation has been prosperous beyond the dreams of man, yet what have the masses of our people to show for it? A better, a higher, and a MORE EXPENSIVE standard of living—that is all. That this prosperity which is our national boast will last forever is incredible. Sooner or later will come one of the times when Nature frowns and sends her floods, her droughts, and her epidemics of disease. Is the American people prepared by its long-sustained prosperity ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... caste system in industry has been broken down, and men and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes for the better, people ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... hardship involved in shifting from one industry to another made necessary by certain severe physical accidents. Insurance paid to the totally disabled employee, or to the family of a deceased member, is frequently the means of maintaining the standard of living of the unfortunate family. The risks to which the railway employee is exposed are due to the nature of the trade, the negligence of a fellow workman, or the negligence of the employers. Compensation for ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy
... see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... left they were summoned to the dining room, where refreshments were placed before them; and when the meeting did finally break up every fellow felt deep down in his heart that an important step had been taken toward raising the standard of living among the rising ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren |
