INDUSTRIAL DISPLACEMENT Lack of employment, which, at the time of application, is given in the great majority of instances as the reason for being in need, is usually found on inquiry to be due to some personal deficiency in the employee. He has been discharged for intemperance, for inefficiency, for inability to meet the demands upon him, or for some objectionable trait which may or may not have anything to do with his actual efficiency for the particular task upon which he was engaged. In a certain proportion of instances, however, by no means insignificant in the aggregate, destitution is due to lack of employment, which cannot properly be charged to any fault of the employee. Loss of employment, in deed, is a frequent occurrence, and although it does not as a rule result in immediate destitution, it is almost always a matter of very serious consequence to the laborer and his family. The introduction of machinery ; changes in methods of industry ; a falling off in the demand for par ticular commodities ; disturbances of credit ; or the mere substitution of a new management in a particular indus trial enterprise, which is either more or less efficient than the old, may have the effect of throwing persons out of work. If they are young and adapt themselves readily to new circumstances, comparatively little harm may result. There may be demand elsewhere for the same kind of work which they have been doing, or they may be able to do something different and thus find employment where there is a demand. The laborer who has had in youth a varied manual training, and who is not readily discour aged, will be less likely to suffer seriously from such en forced changes. The man who has accumulated some 161 savings Will also be at a great advantage when forced to look about for new employment.
It is not surprising, however, that where there is a high standard of living, and where rapid and exhausting labor is the rule, industrial changes should come, in some instances, to those who, on account of age and exceptional hardships, cannot readily adjust themselves to the new situ ation, and who, consequently, become dependent through no exceptional neglect or fault on their own part. At worst their failure to provide for such a situation may indicate a failure to realize the probability of its occur rence, and the expenditures that have been made may all have been for perfectly legitimate and desirable objects. It is under such circumstances that industrial displace ment is properly regarded as a real cause of distress. If it is accompanied by intemperance or dishonesty or ineffi ciency or laziness ; or if it is followed by desertion of family or the adoption of any other criminal method of escape from the consequences, those features of the situ ation must be dealt with on their merits. When, how
ever, there are no such complicating factors, it becomes the more necessary to give assistance in reestablishing the applicant in some suitable occupation. The first principle to be recognized is that the obligation to find employment, like the obligation to continue suitable employment when one has it, rests primarily upon the applicant himself. It is quite possible to undermine self-reliance by doing gratuitously the things which a self-respecting man will do for himself. The search from one place to another among the establishments in which it would be appropriate to make application for work ; the scrutiny of want adver tisements; the study of the pages of a business directory; consultation with fellow-workmen in the same branch of industry; and registration in a reputable employment agency, are all means of which use may be made by the man in search of work.
It is true that there are instances in which the most desperate efforts to find employment are unsuccessful ; and when week has succeeded week, and month has suc ceeded month in fruitless efforts, the seeker for employ ment may become despondent, and by his very lack of success reduced to a physical and mental condition in which further unaided search becomes impossible. Suc cessive failures finally rob the applicant for work even of the power to imagine himself able to succeed, and the most trivial obstacle becomes magnified into one that appears insuperable. Before this condition has been reached the lack of income has often reduced the family to a destitute condition, although the wages of wife or children may have replaced those of the natural breadwinner. When the situation is such that relief must be supplied if em ployment cannot be provided, and there is nevertheless an able-bodied man in the family, it is obviously both charitable and economical to give a helping hand in the finding of suitable employment as a substitute for relief, or, more accurately, as a means of relief. This may be done through a free employment bureau, or an employ ment bureau in which payment of registration fee may be deferred until it can be met from wages, or through the payment of registration fee as a gift or loan to the appli cant, or through personal solicitation on the applicant's behalf among possible employers. The funds of chari table societies and the energies of their agents and visi tors should not be absorbed in performing the services which naturally belong to ordinary business employment agencies, but when the alternative lies between charitable aid and employment, the latter becomes a legitimate choice and this objection disappears.