Scanned from Out of Work: A Study of Unemployment by Frances A. Kellor (New York: G.P. Putnam's, 1915): 1-33

CHAPTER I

UNEMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA

WAR has torn Europe asunder, shattered industrial activity and prosperity, destroyed industrial peace, and halted social insurance and other industrial welfare measures. Its first immediate effect in America has been stagnation of business, disturbance of credit and an enormous increase in unemployment, especially among skilled and professional workers. There are thousands of dollars and hundreds of organizations for relief in this immediate crisis, but practically no agency for steadying the labor market, and at the same time providing work. Unemployment is not yet regarded as one of the factors that must be taken into account in the problem of industrial organization, and no adequate provisions have therefore been made for its representation, such as credit has in the banking system, and treasury department, investments in the stock exchange and capital in boards of trade. It is not strange therefore that the present intensification of unemployment is being met merely by increasing relief measures.

Prosperous America has steadily and obstinately refused to admit that it has a genuine unemployment problem, chargeable against industry. Publications establishing this fact have been frowned upon as harmful to business. Protest meetings and public discussion have received little encouragement. The unshakable belief of the American in the prosperity of his country and the prevalent delusion that every man willing to work can find steady work have prevented him from taking stock. The ease with which workmen have been drafted from foreign countries and the indifference which has permitted them to return to their home industries in slack seasons to spend their earnings have prevented industry from noting certain very important industrial changes, such for instance as the entrance of women and children into industry, covering losses in wages and in regularity of work for male earners and blinding many to both the growth and cost of unemployment. It follows that upon the subject of unemployment in this country, research is limited, knowledge circumscribed, and literature local or indefinite; the remedies, if there are any, are inadequate and antiquated. In a country where there is a commission or civic committee or trade organization dealing with every other social problem, the wilderness of unemployment has remained unexplored, its waste has gone unchecked, its causes remained obscure.

America's persistent refusal to face existing conditions is partly due to certain illusions which exist in the popular mind:

"Any man who really wants a job can get one of some kind." The implication is that every man in a bread-line is aged, infirm, deficient, or a shirker. There is complete disregard of the fact that many fields of work are highly specialized and the standards exacting. Why, it is asked, for instance, should not every man shovel snow, provided the snow is obliging enough to come at a critical time, and in sufficient quantity to warrant equipping all the waiting thousands with snow shovels? In the winter of 1913-14 one county superintendent of the poor in New York State, somewhat distrusting the old tradition that any man out of work should be able to do anything that could be called work, asked for a physical examination of thirty men who were detailed to go "out on the road." The physician that made the examination certified that twelve of the men were unfitted for the work in their present condition, and that six others were organically unfitted for that particular work at any time. Another answer is found in a study of 2000 unemployed men in the Municipal Lodging House in New York City in the winter of 1913-14. Far from being incapacitated by age, they were in the very prime of life, thirty-six years being the average age. Five per cent. of them were under twenty-one years of age, and only 127 were over sixty years. Only twelve per cent. showed actual evidence of defective mentality; forty per cent. were skilled workmen. The superintendent of the lodging house summarizes the investigation thus:

"You can always get work on a farm." This popular theory ignores the seasonal and isolated nature of farm labor, the growth of manufacture, and the differences in wage rates. It minimizes the fact that it is often impossible for the laborer to pay for transportation to the places where farm work exists. It ignores the more obvious fact that there is no farm work in winter. The theory is as little tenable as the dictum "Anybody can raise chickens," the fallacy of which now perhaps needs no comment.

"But so far as the women are concerned-any girl can get housework!" This is based on the knowledge that good houseworkers are in demand, but ignores the fact that factory workers are often no more fitted to do housework than housewives who know nothing about housework are fitted to direct them. In times of industrial depression, moreover, the first economies are practiced within households. During the winter of 1914 many housewives did their own work or reduced their staff; and a considerable number of unemployed women were household workers, set adrift in this way for the first time in many years.

Finally there is the triumphant "Stop immigration." The advocates of this remedy for unemployment apparently do not know that although the highly skilled trades engage few immigrants in New York State, sixteen per cent. were reported by the unions as unemployed in 1913. Of the already mentioned 2000 cases at the Municipal Lodging House in New York City, about forty had been in the United States less than three years, while only nine per cent. had been in the city less than one year. The average time of residence in New York City proved to be thirty-two years and four months. Certainly these were native sons. Moreover, the forty per cent of skilled workmen at least had not been displaced by immigrants. And, on the other hand, the ranks of "hoboes" include few recent immigrants; rarely do they beg at the back doors of American homes.

Is there a genuine unemployment problem inherent in our industrial life, of sufficient importance to be dealt with by business, labor, and government, or is there simply an increasing body of vagrants for the police to handle, and of unemployables for whom charity should furnish relief?

Such questioning as this is formulated more clearly by the rude shock this country has received in the European war and by the subsequent realization of America's dependence upon international markets. Just as a shirt-waist factory fire was a sad prerequisite for fire prevention laws, a Titanic disaster a tragic preface to safety on the sea, a holocaust at Calumet and a massacre at Ludlow heartrending antecedents to a more authoritative knowledge of labor conditions, so, it seems, may the present war be a tragic agent for arousing America to the menace of unemployment. Before it, unemployed men had invaded churches, asking for shelter and work; babies had clamored for places in bread-lines; armies of men had started out to march to Washington to register a protest, and men had been shot down in hop-field riots. None of these things, however, served to focus public attention upon unemployment as an industrial evil. The employed, from the vantage point of a job, and the employer, secure in his investment, have held placidly to the old tradition that there was plenty of work. Even the unemployed, tramping the streets for jobs, have cherished the traditional faith of a new country famed for prosperity, and had their fears lulled to sleep by the first temporary job. The "won't works," feeling secure in America's generous but not too inquiring liberality and lax regulations of vagrancy, escaped both work and discipline. The men on the firing line who urged action were regarded not as prophets but as agitators.

But so many "steady jobs" have been lost that the most complacent believer in prosperity is abandoning his belief that unemployment is a matter of morality rather than of industry. When, for instance, he read in the newspaper one morning in the winter of 1913-14 that 325,000 men were out of work in New York City alone, he may have felt some annoyance at the perpetrator of statistics so disturbing and at the shiftlessness, if not the immorality, of those that furnished any reason for being included in that count; but he found less satisfaction or peace of mind than formerly in so expressing his opinion. Somewhere lurked the fear for his own job and family.

Close upon these revelations followed others which further threatened his complacency. Nightly the New York City Municipal Lodging House was overtaxed to double its capacity, and the city's icy piers overcrowded with sleepers, even the Morgue opened that the homeless living might sleep beside the unknown dead. There were new faces every night; it was a shifting crowd. Where they slept on the other nights, and what moves they made to find a corner or to find work is a question answered only by the resourcefulness of the individual sufferers and the incidental kindness of citizens more fortunate than they. Settlements served as lodging-houses though they had nothing better to offer than newspapers for sheets and floors for beds.

"Swept out with the sawdust in the morning," laconically answered one man when asked where he was living. While city authorities and civic societies debate whether unemployment is a relief or an industrial matter, and whether shelter without a work test will pauperize the homeless, the back rooms of saloons are the actual refuge for many. Fourteen hundred and twenty-six unemployed and homeless men were found sleeping in ninety-four saloons during one investigation in the winter of 1913-14 in New York City. The man that has a nickel gets a drink, a free lunch, and a spot on the floor in the sawdust; and perhaps this is the best nickel's worth and the cheapest, warmest, surest, and cleanest guarantee against freezing in many cities to-day. If he has no nickel the saloon-keeper checks up his promise of future patronage,--a promise he is pretty certain to keep. Moreover, the saloon-keeper knows the contractors, the city officials, and the head waiters, and can manipulate more jobs than the best employment agency in existence. He is ready to listen to a tale of woe, to make a small loan, to provide food--in short, he is a genuine, if interested, friend of the "down and out" man. It is grimly significant that in 1913-14 the New York State Excise Department found it necessary to deal with this subject at some length. It made recommendations for relief including the establishment of municipal lodging-houses, at the same time emphasizing the point that until such lodging-houses are adequately established, it is futile to call for the closing of the saloons to the homeless.

One reason for the popularity of the saloon as a lodging-place is found in the answer of one of the men in the bread-line, to a question as to where he expected to sleep:

The eager, silent, shivering line waiting in the still dark winter dawn outside every newspaper office in the city for the advertisement sheet, hot from the press, is certainly not recruited from slothful sleepers. "If I could tell you," one of these men said, "how often I have got down here early and the thousands of miles I have tramped answering advertisements, only to find hundreds of men in line or turned away before me, you'd get some idea of what this disorganized advertising business means to us. Also you'd know how much I want a job!"

"I left the Bowery bread-line at one in the morning," said one man, "and walked up to 125th Street so I could get a newspaper up there early and find a job in that vicinity, and so get ahead of the fellow that waited in Park Row and then had to hoof it uptown." One opportunist in the newspaper line made the brilliant discovery that by paying one of the pressmen a quarter he could get advance sheets of advertisements, and get out to the job before the rest of the line got their papers. It is characteristic of our wasteful methods that in periods of unemployment hundreds of men answer each promising advertisement and there is no way to stop the stream which may keep up for days. Few advertisers know how to state their requirements, and only after spending time and carfare do applicants learn that an important requirement has been forgotten. Desperation, hunger, cold, and the bitter consciousness of dependent families, lead men to tramp long distances in the hope that they can do work for which under other conditions they would know they are not qualified. Men capable in times of employment are weak, improperly clothed, and the very want in their faces makes an unfavorable impression upon men who would hire them under other conditions.

A few men told of trying employment agencies. Few of these, however, are free, and those that are free are usually limited in their scope and in the variety of occupations with which they are concerned. In private agencies, the man with the fee is on the preferred list and the man without the price of bed or breakfast is on the waiting list. "The only place a man can get a job in this town," said one of the pier sleepers, "is at an agency where you have to pay ten per cent. of your first month's wages, and I haven't even the car fare to get there."

These are the stories of individuals. Their significance lies in the fact that they are typical of a widespread condition. The gatherings of the unemployed in which these men were found were not the isolated experiences of a few winter nights or confined to a few centers. Night after night it was that nearly two thousand besieged the Lodging House in New York City, that 1400 lay on the city's ferry-boats packed together like sardines in quarters where the odor from the dirty, restless men made sleep well-nigh impossible. Probably few of these that saw in their newspapers at breakfast the cartoonist's sketch of the "Wreck-reation" pier knew that six hundred nightly stretched out there for rest. Only the very early risers saw them coming every morning from the piers, docks, stables, and back saloon doors, brushing off the sawdust and hurrying stiffly off. More stiffly still came farm-hands waiting for spring jobs, whom a benevolent employment agent allowed to stay in his waiting-room all night-250 of them at one well-known agency-standing up, however, since to lie or sit down would mean turning someone out in the cold.

Through the day, making a sorry pretense at merging in the life of the city, the army kept in motion, tramping toward the job with which they never caught up, or, exhausted, crowding the park square benches, courting the pale winter sun, or standing in the aisles in a free reading room-seizing any excuse for indoor shelter anywhere. But the night was all their own. Sharply defined from the well-ordered citizens possessing a home and a job, they maintained their separate vigil while the city slept. Somewhere in the city many of these men had families-but unemployed men cannot pay rent for a home. In eviction cases unemployment has so frequently been the reason for non-payment of rent that in New York City a committee to deal with such cases has been formed by some of the justices before whom such cases come.

And what of the silent sufferers? Women did not stand in bread-lines or frequent municipal lodging-houses, stations, and saloons. Men that had homes often gave up their beds, families "doubled up" and untold sacrifices were made that hundreds of unemployed women might be kept off the streets. The statement was not infrequently heard from a working girl: "My sheet costs me $1.50 a month," meaning that she paid this for the privilege of sleeping with one or more children or with other women. This helped the family in distress and helped her tide over the slack season. Women that had not worked before silently took the places of men that could not find work. Lonely, elderly women sat in their little lodging-house rooms and wondered whether they would be allowed to stay there for one night more, and if the morrow's tramping would bring forth the work as yet unsighted. In New York down in a little crowded room on Washington Square, women stood in line and besieged a little sewing-room started by the Conference on Unemployment Among Women for the chance to earn enough food to enable them to gain sufficient strength to hunt for work, and sufficiently decent clothing to make themselves prepossessing candidates for it.

Hundreds of children, withdrawn from school by the sharp urge of poverty, formed what was practically a baby's bread-line. One of the newspapers started a fund and distributed bread from two until four in the afternoon. Before the doors were opened the children heckled the policemen that held them in line, and when the door opened the inside of the shop looked like a miniature football scrimmage. Many of these were babies of from four to ten years of age, too young to go to school, but old enough to forage for family supplies!

The scrimmages elsewhere were not always so harmless. In New York City the Industrial Workers of the World advanced upon the churches in an appeal-or rather a demand-for aid, shelter, and work. Some of the churches closed their doors in fear, others did not think that the demand came within the province of the church, while others opened their doors, feeling that the call was a just one. The leader of the church invasions is now serving a year in prison, but there is as yet no church report which deals with the unemployment situation in New York so effectively as does that of the State Excise Commissioner.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific the situation was the same, however various its manifestations. While the young leader of the Industrial Workers of the World was being sentenced in New York, Chicago was quelling a riot and California was dealing with an "army of the unemployed." Fifteen hundred to two thousand men constituting this army demanded from the Governor transportation to Utah on their way to make at protest at Washington. They were dispersed by the militia. By what route did the honest men seeking jobs get into this group?

In Wheatland, California, a hop-grower, in order to get pickers at the lowest possible wage, advertised alluringly throughout California and even in Nevada. Within four days about 3000 people arrived at the ranch--1500 more pickers than the number of drying ovens made possible. On a low, unshaded hill they camped together, workers and non-workers, made up of aliens, typical Western American casual and migratory workers, a few American "hoboes," and many American families of the better middle class for whom the hop and fruit seasons often furnished a "country vacation." At least one half of the campers were destitute. Many of the 1500 for whom there was no work had spent their last cent to get to the ranch and had now no choice but to camp there, waiting for a chance to get in a stray half-day's work, or possibly to succeed workers who, from time to time, left in disgust. The living conditions of the camp soon made it unfit for habitation. There were nine toilets for nearly three thousand people, there was no provision for removing garbage, the wells were often pumped dry by the time the sun rose, and the campers had either to go to town for water, or to distant wells among the ranch buildings. However, a glass of water could be obtained by those who bought stew, and the boss's brother had secured a lemonade concession! Into this group of famished, idle, dissatisfied men and women came the Industrial Workers of the World. The climax was a riot in which four people were killed.

These localized manifestations of unemployment in various parts of the country were but the most spectacular signs of a really prevailing condition. Had it been possible to take a bird's-eye view of the industrial map of this country, there would have been disclosed a less obvious, but more constant and more sinister manifestation in the straggling, confused, and disorganized lines of casual and seasonal workers ceaselessly picking their way over the face of the United States. More than riots, more than armies marching on to Washington are these lines of the temporarily employed a constant index to a prevailing national situation. Some of them are always hunting the elusive steady job; some are merely trying perpetually to fit their equipment successively to various seasonal trades. Sometimes they have worked out a fairly definite circuit, from factory to cranberry bog, from labor camp to ice camp or to the home country in winter and back in the spring. Or, lacking such a scheme of rotation, they simply move on and on in a jagged line, which starts from the steamship dock for the foreigner and from the freight-yard of the city for the native, and covers from spring to spring the camp, the mine, the factory, the saloon, the municipal lodging-house, the hospital, and not infrequently the jail.

From the beginning of this country's history the "mover on" from the Atlantic coast to the western frontier has been a dramatic figure. He is a manifestation of an eternal type, we are reminded, and is not a recent economic product. But it is not merely a spirit of adventure, not merely the impulsion of restless feet that drives many a steady workman "laid off" in a railroad shop or factory from one town to another, seeking an opening in another factory in his trade, in another railroad shop, or failing that, in allied industries such as machine shops or steel works. Meanwhile, as his entry into a town and an opening in his trade there usually fail to coincide, the only possible thing to do seems to be to move on; and move on he does until it becomes a habit and he is classed with the "drifters" of the earth. It is undoubtedly true that nowhere else in the world is there so much ground covered in the blind pursuit of work as there is in these United States

After a continued experience of this sort, the drifter is likely enough to adopt one of three courses; he may take to roving as his normal routine and eventually degenerate into "hoboism"; or take account of stock and decide on a new profession, the journeyman tailor, painter, or mechanic becoming a timber cutter in the northwest, or a worker in the lignite mines and cement fields of Texas, or any sort of hand in a thriving factory in the newest town he has struck. From one point of view this adaption to things as they are may be morally most commendable; from an economic point of view, and too often from a human one also, it merely indexes a waste of abilities diverted from their normal exercise. Lastly, the seasonal or casual worker that fails to make a sufficient number of connections with the varieties of work he can do may easily become one of the visionaries of the earth, that people the "boomed towns" of our prairies; or that vainly urge the arid acres of our foothills to yield their increase; or that follow in the wake of every new development, almost anticipating the report of a new discovery of oil in Oklahoma, or the establishment of a new factory in Texas.

The answer to the question, "Who are the unemployed?" may vary at different times; but in America no matter how many other factors are comprised in the answer these two will always be prominent: the casual worker who is left to bear the burden of unorganized industry, and the migratory worker who is a thoroughly important asset as he goes from State to State moving the nation's crops but who must make his own arrangements for much of the year as best he can.

It is peculiarly American that recognition of the unemployment problem in this country will be dependent upon proving that its volume is great. How much unemployment is there?

It is peculiarly American also that there is no satisfactory answer to this question. This was made most humiliatingly apparent in the winter of 1914 when all over the country people were asking: How many are out of work? Who are the unemployed? What is the matter with America that hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers have to find jobs or change jobs annually? Why are cities congested in winter and farms idle in summer? Why do children ready for work crowd certain employments and end their lives in blind alley trades having no industrial future? Why are operators turned away in the sewing trades when homes are being abandoned for the apartment hotel because there are no servants? Why in non-perishable goods trades must skilled workers look forward to long months of idleness or leave their homes and families to find other work ?

Upon this question, suddenly become acute, as to the extent of unemployment in America, the records of the nation and states are comparatively silent. Because this country cannot afford to publish the census returns of 1910 upon the subject of unemployment, the latest comprehensive data is fourteen years old. Imagine the Department of Agriculture's furnishing crop reports so antiquated! We have for our guidance only estimates that are local, haphazard, or out of date. They establish little, but they imply much.

The 1900 Federal census shows that 22.3 per cent. of all persons having gainful occupations were not working, either at their particular occupation or at any other, at some time during the census year. Over 2,600,000 men and nearly 500,000 women were out of work from four to six months, and over 500,000 men were out of work seven months or over. The report on unemployment summarizes its tables as follows, showing the number of persons unemployed in various occupations:

In 1901 the Federal Bureau of Labor made an investigation into the cost of living of 25,440 families of workmen or persons on salaries of not over $1200 a year distributed over the United States. The report shows that about half--49.81 per cent.--of the 24,402 heads of families were idle for part of the year.

The Geological Survey reports on coal mining from 1890 to 1910 show that workmen in bituminous mines lost from 22 to 43 per cent. of their working time annually, and workmen in anthracite mines from 23.7 to 50 per cent. disregarding the year 1902, when the great strike took place.

The Wainwright Commission in New York State, appointed in 1909 to inquire into the question of employers' liability and other matters, said in its report on employment:

Significant in this connection are the figures for union labor. The New York State Department of Labor collected reports each month during the ten years 1901-1911 from organized workmen, averaging in number 99,069 each month. It was found that the average number unemployed each month was 14,146 or 18.1 per cent. These men, it is to be remembered, were organized skilled workmen-not unskilled casual laborers.

Official bulletins published by the Commissioner of Labor of New York State show that the percentage of unemployment among union workmen was greater in the fiscal year from September 30, 1912, to September 30, 1913, than in any other year since 1896, with the single exception of 1908. 16.1 per cent. of the union men reporting to the department were idle on September 30, 1913. Through the winter this percentage rose steadily. On December 31, 1913, it was 38.8 per cent. The percentage of unemployed from July to December was 22.7 per cent.--nearly equal to that in 1908, when it was 22.9 per cent. Ninety-two per cent. of this enforced idleness was due to lack of work, and only 1 per cent. to labor disputes. These returns represent 300 different trades or branches of trades. The increase in unemployment was especially heavy in the building and clothing trades, which are also the two largest groups with union membership.

These are the figures for New York State. In New York City the percentage was even higher--45.5 per cent. at the end of December, 1913. As two-thirds of the union members in the building industry and over go per cent. of the members in the clothing trades live in New York City, the number of unemployed in the city reached a very high mark. The activities of various unions in the matter of furnishing relief were unusual. The six unions of Jewish bakers on the East Side assessed each of their members who was working one dollar a week toward a fund for unemployed members. At least one, and probably a number of the garment trades, assessed their members five per cent. of the weekly wage to be devoted to the same purpose. The organizer of the United Hebrew Trades estimated that about 75,000 men were idle on the East Side, including several thousand in the seasonal trades who were habitually idle at this time.

Manifestly with national data fourteen years old, with State data limited to skilled workmen in unions, with municipal records consisting of reports from miscellaneous lodging-houses, missions, bread-lines, and relief organizations, and with no records available from the industries themselves, no trustworthy statement can be made of either the volume of unemployment or of the area over which it is spread, to say nothing of its nature and causes.

In these circumstances, estimates placing the number of unemployed high have naturally been eagerly denied in some quarters. This is true of the already mentioned estimate of 325,000 unemployed in New York City alone in the winter of 1913-14. As a result of the discussion that ensued, and the allegation by rival party papers that the present administration was the cause of the prevailing unemployment, the Federal Industrial Relations Commission, a temporary body appointed by the President to ascertain the causes of industrial unrest, decided to test the reliability of these figures by a census of the unemployed.

Apparently without consulting the government experts who formulate schedules and make a business of gathering statistics, the Commission asked the chiefs of police in cities to have the captain of each district fill out the following schedule and return it to the Commission:

As this census is typical of the hurried, ill-advised way in which much of our investigation is done, and as it is likely to be given considerable current political value, as the latest data, it is well to call attention to certain characteristics of the inquiry:

So far as is ascertainable no uniform instructions accompanied this schedule. What were the common denominators of "estimate?" Did they include a house to house canvass; did they include employment agencies and lodging-places; did this take account of wage-earning children, and what was done to verify the information? To what extent were rumors and guesses included?

The reports do not indicate that there was any common understanding among the enumerators as to the terms used. Did unemployment include men with a few days' work each week and those doing odd jobs or piece-work? What trades were covered by "skilled workmen" and was the record in each case based on previous training and profession or the last position held, or neither? Did the term foreigner include the naturalized alien or not? To illustrate from some of the returns:

In one report on 1000 unemployed, 800 are recorded as skilled workmen, but 900 are recorded as foreigners-an unusually high percentage of skilled workmen among foreigners. On the question of the amount of unemployment, the exclusion of women, of whom there are over 8,000,000 wage-earners in the United States would invalidate this report as an accurate statement of the unemployment situation in this country. It is also difficult to comprehend just how the captain counted the thousands of men who sleep in saloons at night and tramp the street by day looking for work, or sleep in employment agencies, outbuildings, and in the by-ways of cities where no records are kept. One report says in answer to question 7, "150 have homes in this section, 70 in other sections and 50 in public lodging-places about the city." Were the 120 counted twice? If not, by what process was duplication avoided? In another report one captain says ninety-eight per cent. are residents of his precinct, but replies under question 7 that all live in their own homes in his precinct. Two per cent. are lost somewhere between "residents" and "homes." On the question "How many of the unemployed in your precinct do you believe find odd jobs in your precinct?" one captain replied: "None, except the forty-five who would not work." If this is a fair sample of the replies, the publication of the data will be awaited with interest.

As a result of this canvass New York City estimates were reduced from 325,000 to 96,000 and a public statement was issued to that effect. This is one of the illustrations of the influence of political expediency upon statistics.

Some of the states have made studies or kept records of placements by public agencies. These at best give information for but a small locality, and it is difficult to ascertain their accuracy. For instance, the Massachusetts Committee to Investigate Employment Agencies reported that it had investigated 666 cases that the public employment agency had recorded as "hired" and had found that from 14 to 36 per cent. of them were not hired. This is a considerable percentage of error in so vital a matter.

If there have been negligence and carelessness in gathering data on unemployment, there has been more than indifference to the necessity for defining the subject, and for distinguishing the employable from the unemployable. Yet it is difficult to see how any estimate of numbers, or any generalizations as to extent or causes of unemployment can proceed upon a basis that does not sharply differentiate these two classes. The first presents an industrial problem. It includes those unemployed persons able and willing to work, those who are ready to enter industry for the first time, the victims of maladjustment who may seldom actually join the ranks of the unemployed but who are constantly in process of change from industry to industry or who are engaged in seasonal or casual work, those who are under-employed, the short time men who accept reduction in hours and pay rather than be thrown out entirely, etc. These constitute a constant unemployed group with which we are here concerned.

The second class, the unemployables, presents primarily a relief problem. They cannot be made a charge upon industry, nor can the problem be solved by organized business. Whenever this has been attempted in any large measure, it has tended to disorganize the labor market, to lower the efficiency of the industry and to bring about endless controversy. Typical of this class are vagrants that will not work, persons incapacitated for work by old age or illness (not due to industrial accidents and diseases) the handicapped such as cripples, defectives, mothers that must keep their children with them daily while they work, convicts, girls and boys on parole, and those that are inefficient or defective for some non-removable cause. These are temporarily or permanently out of the normal industrial field. Many are capable of some form of work, but require special organizations or personal arrangement to adjust this. Some are defectives and require institutional care. Some are physically unfit and need to be brought up to a better standard, while others require relief. Obviously this group requires a different examination and treatment from that contemplated here.

The initiation both of immediate and long-time programs of constructive action is the primary purpose of this book. Some limitation, therefore, must be set upon so unwieldy a subject as unemployment. So far as practicable, it is treated as a problem of industry, and limited to those who are able and willing to work.

Even within this field, exceptions occur. First, it refers primarily to those that work for wages. Any pronouncements concerning the professional class for which there is a complete lack of data, will be highly speculative. Obviously also those on a strike cannot be included, because other issues are involved and the unemployment is not involuntary.

Unemployment, then, as here used, is involuntary idleness, not due to refusal to accept a wage rate lower, or conditions less favorable than those in which the workman is habitually employed, or those obtaining by reason of existing agreements between associations of employers and employees; or, failing such agreement, than those generally recognized in the district by good employers. In other words, the workman involuntarily idle who refuses work in which he is customarily employed because of the lower wage-rate or less favorable conditions is not by this act transferred to the unemployable class.

Since America has taken neither the trouble nor the expense to determine the extent and nature of its unemployment problem, it follows that the causes of unemployment must be wholly speculative so far as this country is concerned. There is a long list of so-called popular or unpopular explanations, as you please, which include: monopoly of land, the prevailing wage-system, politics, and loss of business confidence, "psychological" depression, the tariff, convict labor, patent laws, immigration, minimum wage, child labor, mechanical inventions, entrance of women into industry, trusts and labor organizations. Advocates are many who claim that any one of these, or a combination of them will explain the prevalence of unemployment. The International Conference on Unemployment, in the course of its three years' investigations, has been presented by its members with a number of different theories upon which there is as yet little agreement. America has not contributed much to the formulation of these theories, and there is still to be set forth for this country an analysis of conditions which will establish indisputably the causes of unemployment.

There is much more agreement as to the social effects of unemployment; results rather than causes, indeed, have claimed our attention. It is admitted that casual labor is one of the most direct routes to vagrancy and pauperism because the habit of regular work is easily lost, and with it are lost self-respect and confidence, so that when opportunity comes the workman may not be employable; that uncertainty of income demoralizes housekeeping methods and standards of living and leads to shiftlessness and misery; that a feast or a famine is a ruinous existence; that children brought up in such surroundings are stunted, undernourished, inadequately clothed, morally weak, and do not have the opportunity to enter trades with a promise of a future in them; that vice and immorality increase with unemployment; that the wearying search for labor day after day destroys the moral fibre; that periods of unemployment impair technical skill; that precariousness of employment leads to intemperance and gambling; that a large expenditure in prosperous times does not compensate for the privations and depression of unfavorable times and is not conducive to habits of thrift; that the dread of losing a job impairs efficiency and destroys happiness; that the sense of being useless and thrown out of the routine of life is a shock which leads to rapid deterioration, and that a succession of jobs gradually blunts fidelity, zeal, and disinterested effort. Aside from these obvious results of unemployment, the cost to industry in the waste of men through lost time and maladjustment and deterioration, in the loss of skill and in cost of supervision are beyond calculation at this time. To communities the cost is not less. No community can safely carry large numbers of unemployed men and women deprived of normal activities and therefore susceptible to harmful influences, and unable without their earnings to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families. Mr. Sidney Webb, speaking of conditions in England, says that while casual laborers and their families constitute one-tenth of the population, they are responsible for four-fifths of the problems with which the health officers have to deal.

The European war has intensified very greatly the problem of unemployment, has increased its range of variation, and is testing to the utmost America's capacity for adjustment. The lack of raw materials, the stopping of exports, the falling off of the shipping trade have challenged American industry in many directions. Again rumors are rife as to just what is the extent of the present unemployment. Five hundred thousand are reported to be out of work in the Pittsburgh district, the same number in New York City. What the figures for these sections and others really are, nobody knows. But so pressing are the local manifestations in many places that recognition is not lacking that, whatever the numbers may be, they are great. For the first time there is a general tendency among municipalities to provide public works. Everywhere relief agencies are combining. Two cardinal facts stand out in the present situation: first that there is undoubted need for immediate relief measures on a large scale; and secondly that the rapid transition from a normal immigration to a dearth and then to a probably enormous increase, and the transition from feverish activity in some industries to stagnation in others require a peculiar mobility in labor and a flexible organization of the labor market not characteristic of America.