Statistics.— In the United States there is not even a system by which to get at the statistics of the unemployed as was painfully evidenced during the great distress of 1914, when so many philanthropically inclined desired facts as to the extent of the far spread misery and want. Un employment has not been considered sufficiently important to build up an organization or gather ing the data of distress from period to period. American statistics on unemployment are limited to several A'investigationsu set in operation at different times by missions, lodging houses, bread lines, relief organizations and other he terogeneous agencies. The 1900 Federal census tells us 22.3 per cent of persons having gainful occupations were out of work some time during the year and more than 2,600,000 men and about 500,000 women were out of work seven months or more. The 'Report of the Massa chusetts Board to Investigate the Subject of Unemployment > (1895) contains some statistics. The Federal Bureau of Labor made an investi gation in 1901 as to the cost of living among 25,440 families of the working classes and those with salaries of 1,200 or less, and discovered 49.81 per cent of the heads of families were idle part of the year. The Geological Survey in its report on mining conditions from 1890 to 1910 shows 22 to 43 per cent of the miners' time was lost annually in the bitumenous region and the anthracite miners lost 23 to 50 per cent in other years than 1902 when the great strike was active. The Wainwright Commission in New York State in 1909 investigating employ ers' liabilities and allied matters found: "There were no statistics available from which to com pute the actual number of those out of work," but they estimated at least 3 per cent out of work in the State's industries of those regularly employed and 8 to 10 per cent in winter. This rate increased to from 15 to 40 per cent in 1908 during the business depression. Of organized labor, where some systematic methods of ob taining employment for its members prevail, the New York State Department of Labor col lected monthly the reports of the unions from 1901 to 1911, which showed an average of 14,146 unemployed each month out of an average membership of 99,069 or 18.1 per cent. This is skilled labor. New 'York State Commissioner of Labor found out of 600,000 organized wage earners 101,000 idle (16.1 per cent of men) in 300 trades or branches between September 1912 and September 1913 (a had year for labor), and growing to 38.8 per cent on 31 December 1913. Of this 92 per cent of idleness was due to lack of work and 2 per cent due to labor disputes. While the deplorable statistics given above apply to New York State, New York City had the still higher figure, ending December 1913, of 45.5 per cent with over 90 per cent of the clothing trades of this city idle and two thirds of the union men members of the build ing trade. The industries themselves have no records or particulars of unemployment. In this same stray manner the temporarily organized appointees under the Federal Industrial Rela tions Commission, in 1914, sent a sheet of eight questions to the chiefs of police of the cities of the United States to get at the underlying causes of industrial unrest, four of which ques tions concerned the unemployed in each city. It was unaccompanied by any instructions as to a system of investigation, and from this and other tauses the figures forthcoming are abso lutely unreliable. Women were excluded from the inquiry and we have over 8,000,000 female wage-earners; political influence on the replies suppressed or °softened down° unques tionable in some locations. With the utter lack of reliable statistics in this country we are liable to look to Europe for such figures of unemployment; as this industrial disease has been more malignant in the old country greater research and more remedies are discoverable there. But as to whether we can utilize such foreign statistics as a measure on which to base our activity here or whether to adopt such remedies as may have proven efficacious in France, England or Germany, we are in doubt. Whether they would prove available in the United States labor field is dubious, surrounding conditions being so very different in many respects.
Relief and The past World War has proven that labor can be mobilized by our government, and such an experience might lead us to suppose that this last great disaster might be the means of opening our eyes to an effective method of treatment of this eco nomic disease of unemployment by the Fed eral government. The Teutonic attempt at world invasion should be accepted as an eye opener to us that our deficiencies in politics and economics are so dangerous as to render our very stability as a republic doubtful. Anarchism and other features we now call °unrest° of the laboring classes are best (and probably only) to be fought successfully with a perfectioning of our industrial system and one that will eliminate unemployment. The war has given us both the opportunity and vision of the necessity of industrial reform. The nation must come to a decision that the question of unemployment is one of the great national issues and should be treated by Federal and State governments as one of the foremost problems and one of the permanent, not emer gency, official duties due its people. The na tional effort to find employment for the return ing regiments of the American Expeditionary Forces has brought us the hitherto lacking ex perience of handling that branch of the labor problem. Whether we shall gain from the ex perience permanent advantage the future alone can tell. As to mitigating methods against the evil many of the advanced students of the problem assert that teaching the artisan to be expert in more than one line of manipulation, so as to take up vacancies elsewhere when the operations he performs have no demand, would reduce the ranks of the unemployed to a con siderable extent. There are many agencies fighting to reduce the number of sufferers from unemployment of which space permits mention of but a few. Some of these give their services free, others charge a nominal fee to veil the appearance of charity. Like the professed "in Iclligence offices° they spend a large part of their endeavor in locating vacancies in the industries. There are numerous public employ ment bureaus. Forty-six States have had laws passed providing free employment bureaus. Municipal bureaus of independent origin and operation are established in many United States cities. The municipal lodging houses do their small quota of placing their distressed lodgers in service, and the New York social service bureaus attempt to organize the units into one whole of enlarged usefulness. In 1914 the
Bureau of Immigration of the United States Department of Labor started 38 branch offices in different sections through which much use fulness may result.
As to °relief° agencies of philanthropic effort, the danger lies in the fact of their tend ency to reduce the moral status of the as sisted workers. This may occur by allowing the form of administration of assistance to be openly °charity° work or by creating in the recipients habits of idleness, in both of which cases the agency is creating mendicants or de pendents instead of maintaining the needful feeling of independence and the desire for active and gainful occupation. The general theory is, therefore, that philanthropic assist ance shall be exerted only in behalf of those incapable of strenuous labor, such as the aged, debilitated,. wounded, etc. A class of recent assistance to employment is represented in the Jewish Agricultural Aid Society and the Indus trial Removal Office of New York City. But their function is mainly to freshly-arrived Jewish immigrants in agricultural occupations and thereby avoid these from becoming addi tional competitors in this already overcrowded city. The plan of activity practised by the agencies of the churches, missions or parish houses have been usually on a pseudo self supporting basis of fees. Of a similar character is the employment department of the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America, covering a large sphere of usefulness in both skilled and unskilled ranks of labor, where work accom panies the assistance as a reciprocal. There is also the Inter-Church Committee on Unem ployment of the New York City Federation of Churches with activities of the broader scope. The Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., etc., employ ment bureaus carry out their part of the pro gram for clerical and business employees un employed. The National Employment Exchange places quite a number of workers of all kinds and charges fees. One expert at least is of opinion that the quantity of small employment agencies of the free order is too large and the effort should be diverted to large clearing houses of labor closely in co-operation with organized labor and organized business, all °relief° or °welfare° work being restricted to emergency and disability cases. Civic organi zations recently have taken up this important problem of unemployment in other branches of activity than the locating of work for unem ployed labor. Of such are The American Asso ciation of Labor Legislation, the Committee for Immigrants in America, whose work is the stimulation of labor legislation, propagation of public interest in the unemployment problem, etc. The defect of all the above agencies is lack of combined organization, being strictly local or independent in action. „ A general •survey of the would make it appear that logically there are two main points of attack in the unemployment prob lem, (1) The temporary amelioration of a prevailing condition (relief on civil, State, Fed eral or philanthropical lines) ; (2) the eradica tion of the condition, preferably by Federal organization (it is a national disease). But the latter course calls for the co-operation of the industries themselves. A commencement of the United States intervention in this great national issue was the establishment of the De partment of Labor with its secretary a member of the Cabinet in the United States government, created 1913. An early act was to establish 18 zones "for the purpose of facilitating the dis tributing of farm labor, in the United States, with headquarters in the large cities. Several annual meetings of the International Conference on Unemployment have brought forth theories and useful discussion with interchange of views, and we must hope that there will arrive a deci sion for some definite course to pursue for the extirpation of this international evil. From the National Industrial Conference held at Wash ington, D. C., 1919, good results must be hoped for, as it brings capital and labor into direct negotiation and both armies of production have now been trained to the knowledge that singly their efforts at profit-making and producing are nugatory. • Practically all the above enumerated agencies are factors for relief, for the allocation of un employed labor, not for the eradicating of unem ployment, for remedy, not cure, which, after all, is the main part of the problem for solution. These existing, mostly disconnected, sources of relief do not increase the volume of work nor regulate the industries from which work ema nates. Experimental efforts are being brought to bear more or less in this direction. For creating work, charitable associations have es tablished emergency industries, such as wood yards; sewing-rooms for women; some cities have established road-building systems to afford extra work (including the quarrying and crush ing of the stone for same) and other public works. This, however, is closely on a line with the snow-removal winter work of the cities. But plans for the reduction of the causes of unemployment in the industries, the equalizing of labor demand for the seasonal industries, for instance, has been of a strictly individual and sporadic nature. The nearest approach to this solution is, probably, the recent attempt of a large automobile concern to work its maximum output during the winter months and make its slack season during the summer, thus releasing its operatives for work on the har vesting. Another method recently employed by several industries is to make a reduction of the hours of labor so as to spread the work over a larger number of employees and thus avoid the throwing out of work so many oper atives. Some of the larger unions pay their members something during their unemployment out of their assessments, and the labor unions in general look after obtaining work for their members — this is the fruit of organization, that mainspring from which in the end, many experts tell us, must arise the eradication of unemployment. This matter of organization, from present aspects, is likely to take some form of of the interests of capi tal and labor in the different industrial estab lishments, a closer relation between employer and employee, as is being quite forcibly done in England since the World War. The Com mission on Industrial Relations and other recent activities tend to show that, at least, this nation is awaking to the fact of the immensity of the problem from a national as well as social need.