lated either by trade organizations or by state control, indicates the need for a system whereby permanent bodies will be authorized to investigate scientifically such conditions of employment and fix varying hours of labor on a basis which will adequately protect the health and welfare of the employees and the state. The fact already noted, that in some of the leading states of the country industrial boards or commissions have lately been created with authority to make special investigations and to regulate hours in the various industries, is significant of the direction which future progress may be expected to take.1

See Chapter IX, "Administration."

NOTE, May, 1917.-Important developments in hour legislation and judicial interpretation in 1916 and the first few months of 1917 open the way for more general restriction of men's hours in private employment.

Early in 1917 Alaska passed the first general eight-hour law in the United States. covering all wage- and salary-earners. The Adamson law, passed by Congress in September, 1916, to avert a country-wide railroad strike, fixed eight hours as the standard work-day for all employees engaged in the operation of trains in interstate or foreign commerce. A precedent was set for minimum wage legislation for men in private employments affected by a public use by the provision that until after report is made by an investigating commission appointed by the President the rate of pay shall not be reduced below that given for the former ten-hour day. The law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court on March 19, 1917, in Wilson v. New (37 Sup. Ct. 298), the majority opinion stating that the government had the power to regulate conditions of employment in businesses, like the railroads, "affected with a public interest."

On April 9, 1917, in Bunting v. Oregon, the Oregon ten-hour law for employees, including men, in mills and factories was also sustained by the United States Supreme Court. In this case the majority opinion quoted with approval the decision of the Oregon court that the limitation was not unreasonable because "the custom in our industries does not sanction a longer service than ten hours per day." The permission to work three hours overtime daily at time and one-half was held not to be a regulation of wages, but a deterrent of excessive hours where rigid prohibition might not be advisable. This same provision of time and one-half for overtime beyond the basic working day was incorporated in the federal naval appropriation act of March 4, 1917.

Women's daily hours were, among other changes, further limited in 1917 by adoption of the eight-hour day in Nevada and Montana and the reduction of hours in Ohio from ten to nine daily and from fifty-four to fifty weekly.

CHAPTER VI

UNEMPLOYMENT

A careful canvass in March and April, 1915, of about 400,000 families in fifteen American cities showed 11.5 per cent. of the wage-earners unemployed and an additional 16.6 per cent. working only part time. A similar investigation in New York City earlier in the year indicated that 18 per cent. of the wage-earners were unemployed, and it was estimated that the total army of unemployed wage-earners in New York City at that time numbered about 442,000. The United States Census for 1900 showed that 6,468,964 working people, or nearly 25 per cent. of all engaged in gainful occupations, had been unemployed some time during the year. Of these, 3,177,753 lost from one to three months' work each; 2,554,925 lost from four to six months each; 736,286 lost from seven to twelve months each.2

The employee's loss from this irregularity of work is twofold. Besides his enormous immediate loss in wages and the resulting distress, there is the equally serious loss in the weakening of moral fiber which comes with uncertainty, habits of irregular work, and occasional lapses into destitution. Unemployment is a culture bed for pauperism and all its accompanying evils.

Moreover, in addition to the losses by employees is the direct financial loss to employers through the expense of "hiring and firing." A number of employment managers recently estimated the cost of hiring and "breaking in" new employee at from $50 to $200; in only one case was the

1 United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 172, 1915, p. 7. 2 Similar data were collected by the government in 1910, but are still unpublished.

estimate as low as $30. A machine-tool builder to whom the matter had been suggested declared after a careful study of his plant that the hiring of 1,000 new persons in one year, while the permanent additions to his force were fewer than fifty, had reduced his profits by at least $150,000, or about $150 for each new worker hired.1 When many factories are known to hire as many as 1,000 men a year to keep up a permanent force of 300, the magnitude of the resulting waste becomes apparent.

Even this general statement of the wastes of unemployment indicates the imperative need of preventive measures. Hence we are asking with increasing insistence, is unemployment a necessary evil? If not, to what extent is legislation a solution?

In Chapter I it was suggested that unemployment may be defined as the failure to make a labor contract. This failure may be traced to one of three causes: (1) cessation of work arising from trade disputes; (2) unemployability, or disability, owing to sickness, old age, or other personal conditions; and (3) inability of men who are willing and able to work to find employment.

The present discussion relates only to the third part of the whole problem of idleness. Legislation intended to minimize idleness due to labor disputes is discussed in Chapter III. The problems of unemployability and unemployment are by no means identical, but are related to the extent that much chronic unwillingness to work has resulted from the demoralizing influence of unemployment, and therefore a reduction of unemployment may decrease the additions to the ranks of the unemployable. How to provide satisfactory means of caring for the shiftless and the criminal is primarily problem of charity and correction, but the prevention of unemployment is a problem of industrial organization. In this chapter the purpose is to describe the more direct legislative remedies for unemployment due to the inability of normal workers to obtain employment. These remedies may deal either with (1) the regulation of private employment offices, (2) the establishment and operation of public employ

1 Magnus W. Alexander, "Hiring and Firing: The Economic Waste and How to Avoid It," American Industries, August, 1915, p. 19.

し

ment offices, (3) systematic distribution of public work, or the regularization of industry. A fifth important legislative remedy, unemployment insurance, will be discussed in the chapter on "Social Insurance."

A study of the comparative possibilities of the various proposed or attempted remedies for unemployment would be much facilitated by statistics indicating the total amount of involuntary idleness and what proportion is due to each one of the several factors, such as cyclical and seasonal fluctuations, unnecessarily frequent changes in the personnel of the working force and other preventable irregularity in employment, and, lastly, to the lack of a centralized market for labor. But accurate and comprehensive figures of this nature are not available in the United States. The existence of unemployment to a significant degree is undoubted, but unfortunately it is impossible at the present time to make more than a rough guess as to the relative proportion of unemployment due to each of the several causes mentioned.

2

In New York and Massachusetts, however, the state labor departments regularly collect fairly reliable statistics in regard to unemployment among organized workers. The mean percentage of idleness in New York among the members of 'representative unions" 1 at the end of each month from 1904 to 1914, due to causes other than labor disputes or disability, ranged from 6.8 to 28 per cent. In all but two years the percentage was over 12. In the same period the unemployment resulting from other causes was comparatively small, ranging from 0.3 to 4.2 per cent. for labor disputes and from I to 1.4 per cent. for disability. Of the 18.3 per cent. of members of local trade unions reported as unemployed in Massachusetts on December 31, 1914, all but 3.4 per cent. were unemployed because of "lack of work" rather than because of labor disputes or disability.

3

It should also be noted that there is a wide seasonal varia

In 1914 these representative trade unions numbered 232 and had 140,406 members or 25.4 per cent. of the total union membership in the state of New York.

2 New York Department of Labor, Bulletin No. 69, 1915, "Idleness of Organized Wage Earners in 1914," p. 6.

Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, Twenty-eighth Quarterly Report on Unemployment.

tion in the demand for labor. Statistics collected in New York as to idleness of the members of labor organizations indicate that the mean percentage of idleness during the period 1897 to 1913 was, in all but three years, over 5 per cent. at the end of September, and over 15 per cent.—that is, three times as large at the end of March. The federal Census of Manufactures for 1905 showed from the manufacturers' records that in one month 7,017,138 wage-earners were employed, while in another month there were only 4,599,091, leaving a difference of 2,418,047. That is to say, nearly two and a half million fewer workers were employed at one period of the year than at another.

In addition to the irregularity of employment due to cyclical fluctuations in the demand for labor, or industrial “crises," and that due to seasonal variations, a third important type of idleness results from the casual or short time nature of many occupations. The New York commission which studied unemployment reported in 1911 that two out of every five wage-earners are obliged to seek new places one or more times every year. In brief, the best available evidence indicates that unemployment is chronic and the amount never insignificant, even when industrial conditions are at their best.

1. REGULATION OF PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT OFFICES

To the extent that there is somewhere a suitable "manless job" for each "jobless man," the solution of unemployment is simply the proper distribution of the labor supply. Perhaps the commonest method of seeking to bring about this distribution is by unsystematic individual search. A man not recommended for a position by a relative or friend often follows the easiest course, that which involves the least immediate expenditure of money and thought. He starts from home and drops in at every sign of "Help wanted "

"Help wanted," scrawled on a piece of cardboard, is the symbol of inefficiency in the organization of the labor market. The haphazard practice of tramping the streets in search of

1 New York Commission on Employers' Liability and Other Matters, Third Report: Unemployment and Lack of Farm Labor, 1911, p. 38.