Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/599

Rh obtaining employment; gild labour registries or associations of employers (mainly small employers) for the promotion of the interests of the trade in which they are engaged; agricultural labour registries maintained in different parts of Germany by the chambers of agriculture; employers' labour registries, established as a counter move against the trade union registries—they are chiefly in industries employing large capital, particularly the metal industries; and public labour registries, established either by voluntary associations or by municipalities. These latter have been very successful and have provided the model for the English registries. In Austria labour registries have also been established on the German model by many district and municipal authorities, those of Vienna and Prague bein especially successful. Switzerland has a few registries established by public authorities, notably those at Basel, Bern, Schaffhausen and Zurich. In Belgium there are a considerable number of public registries, some established by associations, some philanthropic, some political, some organized by employers, some by employees, some jointly by employers and emplo ed. Some of these registries are in receipt of subventions granted by municipalities, while in a few cases the municipalities themselves have started registries. In France labour registries are of many types. There are the ordinary registry offices, carried on for gain, and requiring a licence from the municipal authorities. They are very numerous and according to returns to the French Labour Department fill over 1,000,000 situations yearly in various occupations. There are also registries maintained by trade gilds, by individual trade unions, by a number of trade unions jointly, by joint associations of employers and employed, by associations of employers, by friendly societies, by philanthropic institutions and b municipalities. These last are being rapidly increased, and will without doubt eventually supersede all the others. In the United States the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin have established free public employment offices, and in many of the other states the private registries are under strict supervision and licensing.

The second permanent remedy is that of insurance against unemployment. Certain schemes have been tried in Switzerland, notably the voluntary municipal scheme of against Berne, the compulsory municipal scheme of St Gall and a trade union scheme at Basel, while there is in Germany a system of insurance against sickness, accident and incapacity (see). Much attention has been devoted in England to the possibilities of insurance against unemployment, and in 1910 a scheme was being worked out by the government with a view to its discussion by parliament in 1911. The lines on which such a scheme must work were clearly laid down by Sir H. Llewellyn Smith, the permanent secretary to the Board of Trade, in his presidential address to the Economic Science and Statistics section of the British Association at Sheffield in September 1910.

“ The crucial question from a practical point of view,” said Sir H. Llewellyn Smith, “ is whether it is possible to devise a scheme of insurance which, while nominally covering unemployment due to all causes other than those which can be definitely excluded, shall automatically discriminate as between the classes of unemployment for which insurance is or is not an appropriate remedy. We can advance a step towards answering this crucial question by enumerating some of the essential characteristics of any unemployment insurance scheme which seem to follow directly or by necessary implication from the conditions of the problem as here laid down.

“ 1. The scheme must be compulsory; otherwise the bad personal risks against which we must always be on our guard would be certain to predominate.

“ 2. The scheme must be contributory, for only by exacting rigorously as a necessary qualification for benefit that a sufficient number of weeks' contribution shall have been paid by each recipient can we possibly hope to put limits on the exceptionally bad risks.

“ 3. With the same object in view there must be a maximum limit to the amount of benefit which can be drawn, both absolutely and in relation to the amount of contribution paid; or, in other words, we must in some way or other secure that the number of weeks for which a workman contributes should bear some relation to his claim upon the fund. Armed with this double weapon of a maximum limit to benefit and of a minimum contribution, the operation of the scheme itself will automatically exclude the loafer.

“ 4. The scheme must avoid encouraging unemployment, and for this purpose it is essential that the rate of unemployment benefit payable shall be relatively low. It would be fatal to any

scheme to offer compensation for unemployment at a rate approximating to that of ordinary wages.

“ 5. For the same reason it is essential to enlist the interest of all those engaged in the insured trades, whether as employers or as workmen, in reducing unemployment, by associating them with the scheme both as regards contribution and management.

“ 6. As it appears on examination that some trades are more suitable to be dealt with by insurance than others, either because the unemployment in these trades contains a large insurable element, or because it takes the form of total discharge rather than short time, or for other reasons, it follows that, for the scheme to have the best chance of success, it should be based upon the trade group, and should at the outset be partial in operation.

“ 7. The group of trades to which the scheme is to be applied must, however, be a large one, and must extend throughout the United Kingdom, as it is essential that industrial mobility as between occupations and districts should not be unduly checked.

“ 8. A state subvention and guarantee will be necessary, in addition to contributions from the trades affected, in order to give the necessary stability and security, and also in order to justify the amount of state control that will be necessary.

“ 9. The scheme must aim at encouraging the regular employer and workman, and discriminating against casual engagements. Otherwise it will be subject to the criticism of placing an undue burden on the regular for the benefit of the irregular members of the trade.

“ 10. The scheme must not act as a discouragement to voluntary provision for unemployment, and for that purpose some well-devised plan of co-operation is essential between the state organization and the voluntary associations which at present provide unemployed benefit for their members. Our analysis, therefore, leads us step by step to the contemplation of a national contributory scheme of insurance, universal in its operation within the limits of a large group of trades-a group so far as possible self-contained and carefully selected as favourable for the experiment, the funds being derived from compulsory contributions from all those engaged in these trades, with a subsidy and guarantee from the state, and the rules relating to benefit being so devised as to discriminate effectively against unemployment which is mainly due to personal defects, while giving a substantial allowance to those whose unemployment results from industrial causes beyond the control of the individual. Is such a scheme practicable? This is a question partly actuarial, partly administrative, and partly political. I may say that so far as can be judged from such data as exist (and those data are admittedly imperfect and rest on a somewhat narrow basis) a scheme framed on the lines I have indicated is actuarially possible, at least for such a group of trades as building, engineering and shipbuilding.”

In addition to insurance against unemployment by the state, there are various voluntary associations, such as friendly societies and trade unions, which make a feature of grants to their members when out of employment.

In September 1910 the first International Conference on Unemployment was convened in Paris, the subjects of statistics of unemployment, labour registries and state insurance being the chief topics. The outcome of the conference was the formation of a society to study all phases of the problem, and to keep in touch with public and private bodies and the various governments.

.—Report of Royal Commission on Labour (1894); Report of House of Commons Committee on Distress from Want of Employment (1895); Report of Royal Commission on Poor Laws (1909); Report of the Massachusetts Board to Investigate the Subject of the Unemployed. The following recent books will be found useful: P. Alden, The Unemployed (1905); W. H. Beveridge, Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909); N. B. Dearle, Problems of employment in the London Building Trades (1909);]. A. Hobson, The Problem of the Unemployed (1904); F. W. Lewis, State Insurance a Social and Industrial Need (1909); D. F. Schloss, Insurance Against Unemployment (1909); F. I. Taylor, A Bibliographiy of Unemployment and the Unemployed (1909).

 UNGAVA, an unorganized territory of the Dominion of Canada, including the north-western side of the peninsula of (q.v.), bounded by Hudson Bay on the W. as far S. as East Main River; Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay on the N.; and with indefinite boundaries toward Quebec on the S., and the coast strip of Labrador belonging to Newfoundland on the E. The area is estimated at 354,961 sq. m. Ungava includes much of the lower portion of Labrador, with a rim of recent marine deposits along its western coast, but the interior has the usual character of low rocky hills of Archean rocks, especially granite and gneiss, with a long band of little disturbed iron-bearing rocks, resembling the Animikie, or Upper Huronian of the Lake Superior region, near its eastern