Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/722

* UNEMPLOYMENT. 628 UNEMPLOYMENT. ■upon future success; this development goes beyond the limits of safety, and periodically nec-i'ssitatps contraction; this in turn depresses industry, and men are thrown out of work. Fourtli, the Socialist theory, which attributes unemployment to the institution of private prop- erty and the practice of individual competition: these necessarily cause a never-ending fluctuation of supply and demand, and prevent a harmony of industrial interests. Statisticians have not as yet devised any satis- factory nietliod of determining the amount of unemployment. To be complete such figures should show the number of unemployed on a given day; and. secondly, the dy.ration of unemployment for each woi'kman during the year. As ,a rule, the popular estimates of unemployment are greatly exaggerated, owing to the inclusion of the shift- less and chronic poor, and to the inaccurate meth- ods of enumeration. The most important statis- tical sources relating to unemployment in ordinary years are the following: (1) Returns from trade unions, as, for example, those publislied monthly by the Labor Department of Great Britain in the Labor Gazette, and in the Animal Abstract of Labor Statistics, beginning with 1887; by the Labor Department of France since 1894, and of Belgium since 1S95; in the United States by the Labor Bureau of New York in its quarterly bulletin (.lbany). beginning with 1897. and more recently by the American Federation of Labor in its monthly publication, the American Federatioitist (Washington). Those records are limited as a rule to well-organized trades, and consequently do not throw light on the amount of nnem]doymcnt in industry as a whole. Again, in ordinary times the best organized trades are inclined to underestimate the numbers of un- employed for fear that employers will seize the opportunity to lower wages. The English trade union returns clearly show the seasonal char- acter of the building trades, and that in the en- gineering and metal trades unemployment is cyclical. (2) Returns from manufacturers, as published annually since 1886 by the Labor Bureau of JIassachusetts and later by the Labor Bureaus of New Jersey. Connecticut, and Wis- consin. These statistics indicate the number under employment in manufacturing establishments in each month of the year, but do not show the number of those desiring entijloyment. In Massa- chusetts, returns from 4.307 establishments in 1893 showed that in April of that year .319,818 persons were at work, and in September 248,404, or only 78 per cent, of the number employed in April. (3) Census returns, as in the JIassa- chusetts censuses of 1885 and 1895. the Rhode Island census of 1895, and the Pennsylvania cen- sus of 1895. The United States census of 1890 on this point proved a failure. The census of Massachusetts in 1885 showed that 70 per cent, of the working population were continuously employed, and that 30 per cent, were unem- ployed a month or more. The year 1885. how- ever, was one of industrial depression. The Rhode Island census of 1895 showed that on the average 5.8 per cent, of all workers were unem- ployed at a given time, the maximum amount being 7.3 per cent., in February. In Germany two censuses were taken in 1895, on .June 14th and December 2d. The first returned 292.fi78 un- employed out of a total of 15.497.000, and the other 762,608. (4) Special investigations, as by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor in 1878, by the Massachusetts Board to Investigate the Sub- ject of the Unemployed, in 1894, by Parliamen- tary Commissions in Great Britain, and liy the Fre^ich Labor Bureau in 1890. In this category may also be included the police censuses under- taken by municipalities, as that of Boston in De- cember. 1893, and of Brooklyn in February, 1894. riiese special inquiries have generally been made in ]icriods of industrial distress, and frequently in winter months, when there is always a large num- ber of unemployed owing to seasonal causes. In addition to these direct inquiries fragmentary data may be found in the reports of public poor departments and charitable societies, especially when a record is made of the causes of destitu- tion. Care must be taken to distinguish between new applications and the total number, in order to avoid duplication. Of some service also are the records of employment bureaus and registry offices. Statistics of such offices, how'ever, are not statistics of the unemployed alone; they are rather statistics of the labor market, that is, of the oiler and demand for labor, for a certain per- centage of those who register have positions and file applications simply in the desire to ch.ange. The remedies which have been proposed for the relief of uneiiiplnyed are of two kinds, those which are especially applicable in times of emergency and those which are permanent in their operation. In the administration of emer- gency relief perplexing difficulties are met. for it is easy to transmute unemployment into vol- untary idleness. Discrimination must be shown, first, in (he selection of the persons to whom re- lief work is to be given; second, in the choice of work to be undertaken; and, third, in the or- ganization of the agencies by whom the relief work is to be administered. It is difficult to separate the worthy from the unworthy, and to prevent the influx of the unemployed from out- side districts. The abuses occasioned by lax methods of procedure are well illustrated by the '.soup kitchens' and bread carts in . ierican cities in 1873. and by the indiscriminate dis- tribution of the Mansion House Fund in Lon- don in 1886. EfTorts were consequently made to develop a wiser policy in the relief work of each country in 1894. It is now generally agreed that emergency funds as far as possible should be restricted to those who in ordinary times are habitually at work, to those personally known, and to those who are willing to accept less wages than customary, or to work fewer hours per day or fewer days per week, so as to pre- vent refusal to work elsewhere under ordinary conditions. In brief, there must lie investiga- tion and some sort of test; and the shiftless and chronic poor are to be left to the ordinary meth- ods of relief. The choice of kind of work con- stitutes the most difficult phase of the relief problem. Skilled and unskilled laborers alike must he provided for. The principles adopted by the Local Government Board of England in 1893 in the selection of work were as follows: ( 1 ) Work which does not involve the stigma of pauperism; (2) work which all can perform, whatever may have been their previous voca- tions; (3) work which does not compete with that of other laborers at present in employ-