Tables IV and V give numbers registered for unemployment benefits in a few countries. In a country like Great Britain, where Unemployment Policies.—The various nations have all de veloped definite policies to reduce unemployment or to mitigate its effects. They have endeavoured to overcome cyclical fluctua tions by various policies intended to stabilize business or to pro mote business recovery, and encouraged industries to regularize employment ; tried to counterbalance cyclical fluctuations by ex panding public works when private construction was at low levels ; and endeavoured to furnish work for the unemployed on various forms of work relief. They have established national systems of labour exchanges to facilitate job finding. Unemployment insur ance and systems of unemployment relief more or less separated from ordinary poor relief have been developed to provide income for those unable to get either private or public employment.
It is unfortunate that the effects of the various policies which were being tried out, 1920-39, for the reduction of unemployment or of its evil results are difficult to evaluate because the world was so upset in the 192os by the immediate after-effects of the war of 1914-18, and, in the 193os by the menace of another world war and the feverish preparations for it, that the effects of the un employment policies were somewhat obscured. Nevertheless, much can be learned from the experiences of a number of nations which attacked the problem along definite lines.
Great Britain experimented with nationalized unemploy ment insurance, expanded pub lic works (to 1931) and a na tionally supervised system of relief for unemployed unable to get insurance benefits. The sys tem of unemployment relief since 1934 is separate both from the local poor relief for the indi gent and from unemployment insurance. The transfer of some of the unemployed from de pressed areas to more prosperous areas and to Canada, Australia, and other parts of the empire, was a policy of secondary but not negligible importance. It proved to be expensive and far less successful in practice than it promised to be in theory. Pub lic works were found to be such an expensive method of relieving unemployment that in 1931 they were virtually discontinued so far as unemployment re lief was concerned. Great Britain, down to 1939, did not renew that method of dealing with the problem. Unemployment insur ance and unemployment relief absorbed too much of the national Government's financial resources to permit them to continue a large scale program of public works.
The Scandinavian countries have depended principally upon public works to relieve unemployment. But all of them have main tained a nationally co-ordinated relief program supplementary to the work program. Moreover, a part of their industrial popu lation has been under unemployment insurance plans. As a mat ter of fact, examination of the facts in Sweden, where public works to relieve unemployment were given the most thorough-going test to be found in any country previous to the American experiments of 1935 ff., seems to indicate that the adequacy of a work pro gram is apt to be in inverse ratio to the severity of unemployment. In Sweden, when unemployment has increased sharply, it has been cash relief rather than public works which has been expanded to meet the needs of the unemployed. In the Scandinavian coun
tries, as in Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, and other countries, unemployment has become increasingly recog nized as a national problem to be dealt with through national employment-providing policies, national unemployment insurance and relief policies, and national efforts to increase and stabilize the activity of private industry. The great rearmament programs of Italy, Germany, Russia, France, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, were important factors in reducing unemployment during the latter years of the 193os. Extensive road construction, partly incidental to the European military programs and partly due to the increased use of the highways due to expanding automotive transportation, were another major employment-creating activity in many nations financed by Government funds.
The American efforts to combat unemployment during the 193os were on a scale unprecedented in any nation. Down to 1932 the American national Government had never participated in unem ployment relief. Its scanty previous efforts to deal with unem ployment had consisted almost entirely of efforts to stimulate pri vate business to increased efforts to provide work and to encour age States and municipalities to increase public works and work relief during depression. In 1921 the Federal Government called its first Conference on Unemployment to analyze the situation and make recommendations. The conference, which included representatives of labour, business, and governmental bodies, rec ommended an exhaustive investigation "of the whole problem of unemployment and of methods of stabilizing business and industry so as to prevent the vast waves of suffering which result from the valleys in the so-called business cycle." The investigation sug gested had not been made down to 1939, though various Congres sional hearings and special reports on parts of the problem have contributed to better understanding of unemployment. The con ference also recommended that public works be expanded and con tracted inversely to the trends of private employment. The Divi sion of Public Works of the United States Department of Labor asked in 1919 that the States establish or designate some agency "with whom the Federal Government may keep in constant touch concerning plans for the encouragement of State and Federal pub lic works" in periods of unusual unemployment. In 1923 the Sec retary of Commerce recommended that the Federal and local Gov ernments initiate no new public works "not eminently necessary" because "the capacity of the construction industry in the next few months at least will be fully utilized by the demands for private construction and the work of State and local Governments already under contract or critically necessary for maintenance." This was the first effort of the American national Government to retard public works during a prosperity period in order to have more work available during a subsequent depression. In spite of a storm of protest from producers of construction materials, the Federal Government sharply reduced its construction program in 1923 but the volume of municipal work does not appear to have been affected materially.