[Frage zum Zuschlag von 60 Prozent, Bd. 1, S. 72–73]

Emil Lederer: [Frage zum Zuschlag von 60 Prozent] (1920)

This brief intervention in official commission proceedings questions the calculation of a 60 percent surcharge on a coal-price increase attributed to higher wages. Lederer accepts the direct arithmetic: an additional five marks per worker per shift, with output of half a tonne, implies ten marks more per tonne. His objection concerns the justification for adding a further 60 percent.

The intervention distinguishes immediate wage costs from indirect increases in production costs:

Nun meine ich, daß diese erfahrungsgemäß mit der Lohnerhöhung gegebenen gestiegenen Gestehungskosten sich erst in einem späteren Zeitpunkt zur Geltung bringen, wenn die erhöhten Kohlenpreise sich überwälzt haben, z. B. auf die Preise der Maschinen, auf die Preise des Grubenholzes, die ja auch, wie alle Preise, durch erhöhte Kohlenpreise affiziert werden.

English translation: Now I think that these increased production costs, which experience shows accompany the wage increase, only make themselves felt at a later point, once the higher coal prices have been passed on, for example to the prices of machinery and pit timber, which, like all prices, are also affected by higher coal prices.

Lederer thus challenges the timing and accounting basis of the surcharge, without denying that indirect costs can rise. He then asks why increased capital costs also justify separate coal-price increases:

Es schien mir auf den ersten Blick, daß hier derselbe Faktor vielleicht in zwei verschiedenen Rechnungsposten wieder erscheint.

English translation: It seemed to me at first glance that the same factor might be appearing here in two different accounting items.

The closing suspicion is double counting, cautiously framed as a question rather than a demonstrated error. The passage’s significance lies in its insistence that direct wage effects, delayed price transmission, and capital-cost claims be distinguished before they are combined into a price increase.