laborer, not a series of short-time calculations such as labor-contracts

make necessary.

Finally there is the problem of insecurity due to wages too low to yield a decent standard of living. There is just now a disposition to try to solve the problem by the establishment of "minimum-wage scales." The problem is one of the most difficult in the field of economics. If the "natural," or competitive wage is to be set aside as too low, what standard can be found to determine the proper wage? Will there not be evasion of laws prescribing "artificial" wages? To prevent this, will not the government be compelled to regulate prices, service, hiring and discharge, accounting systems, discipline, etc.? Will not the experience of the government in attempting to prevent rebates be duplicated? What will be the influence of regulation on the investment of capital in the industries involved? To what lengths, and to the adoption of what new social schemes, will this policy carry us? Can the project be made to succeed without a supplementary control of the supply of labor? Would it not be better to try to solve the question through an attempt to decrease the numbers of the lower class, and through technical education? It seems that prices seriously at variance with competitive prices cannot be enforced. Such an attempt would have far greater chances of success, if accompanied by efforts to restrict the supply or increase the efficiency of labor. A conscious "control of births," a restriction of immigration, vocational guidance, and compulsory technical training should do much to make the minimum wage effective. If we can wait for slowly changing conditions to produce results, and if we do not force a single proposal to carry the whole burden of raising low wages, eventually we should expect success.

The problem of economic insecurity occurs in its most aggravating form among unskilled and unorganized laborers. State aid will help them; but it will not free them from the necessity of working out their own salvation. Skilled and organized laborers should be able to solve their own problem through their effective device of collective bargaining.

204. LIFE AND LABOR IN A STEEL DISTRICT

At the close of the field work in 1908 we summed up under eight heads the results of the Pittsburgh Survey as to the conditions of life

Taken by permission from E. T. Devine, "Pittsburgh the Year of the Survey," The Pittsburgh District, Civic Frontage: The Pittsburgh Survey, pp. 3-4. (Survey Associates, Inc., 1914.)

and labor among the wage-earners of the American steel district. We found:

I. An altogether incredible amount of overwork by everybody, reaching its extreme in the twelve-hour shift for seven days in the week in the steel mills and the railway switchyards.

II. Low wages for the great majority of the laborers employed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low compared with prices so low as to be inadequate to the maintenance of a normal American standard of living; wages adjusted to the single man in the lodging-house, not to the responsible head of a family.

III. Still lower wages for women, who receive for example in one of the metal trades, in which the proportion of women is great enough to be menacing, one-half as much as unorganized men in the same shops and one-third as much as the men in the union.

IV. An absentee capitalism, with bad effects strikingly analogous to those of absentee landlordism, of which also Pittsburgh furnishes noteworthy examples.

V. A continuous inflow of immigrants with low standards, attracted by a wage which is high by the standards of Southeastern Europe, and which yields a net pecuniary advantage because of abnormally low expenditures for food and shelter and inadequate provision for the contingencies of sickness, accident, and death.

VI. The destruction of family life, not in any imaginary or mystical sense, but by the demands of the day's work, and by the very demonstrable and material method of typhoid fever and industrial accidents-both preventable, but costing in single years in Pittsburgh considerably more than a thousand lives, and irretrievably shattering nearly as many homes.

VII. Archaic social institutions such as the aldermanic court, the ward school district, the family garbage disposal, and the unregenerate charitable institution, still surviving after the conditions to which they were adapted have disappeared.

VIII. The contrast-which does not become blurred by familiarity with detail, but on the contrary becomes more vivid as the outlines are filled in the contrast between the prosperity on the one hand of the most prosperous of all the communities of our western civilization, with its vast natural resources, the generous fostering of government, the human energy, the technical development, the gigantic tonnage of the mines and mills, the enormous capital of which the bank balances afford an indication; and, on the other hand, the neglect

of life, of health, of physical vigor, even of the industrial efficiency of the individual.

C. Unemployment

205. THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM1

1. Unemployment is involuntary idleness during normal work time: a) According to the New York Department of Labor about 15 per cent of the organized workers of that state are constantly unemployed.

b) The United States census estimates that about 22 per cent of the workers of the country are unemployed for a part of the year.

2. The principal personal causes of unemployment are sickness and disability of various sorts:

a) These causes lead to a study of the "unemployables."

b) The "unemployables"-three classes: those physically or mentally wholly unable to work, those who lack efficiency in their work, those too "lazy" to work.

3. Industrial causes of unemployment throw efficient workmen into forced idleness, by circumstances entirely unconnected with their personality:

a) The "disemployed" are out of work, not because they are unable to work, but because there is no work for them to do. b) Seasonal trades are common, and they inevitably mean unemployment: (1) Railroad construction work is suspended during the extreme cold months, likewise building trades, etc. (2) Unemployment is less frequent in summer than in winter (except in coal mines, theaters, clothing trades). (3) The average miner can work, from year to year, about two-thirds of the time. c) Industrial crises and labor troubles increase unemployment: Many thousands of men (strikers) are annually forced out of work because they feel so strongly their class responsibility that they join in an action of which they disapprove.

4. The unemployed leads an irregular life:

a) The result is usually some form of dissipation.

b) The unemployed tends to lose one of his best characteristics as an efficient worker-methodical regularity.

Taken by permission from E. S. Bogardus, An Introduction to the Social Sciences, pp. 91-93. (University of Southern California, 1913. Author's copyright.)

c) At the end of the period of unemployment, the average man is far less efficient and capable than at the beginning of his period of unemployment.

d) Increases need for charity; in two-thirds of the families who apply for charity in industrially normal times, one or more wage-earners are unemployed at the time.

e) The irregular life of the father communicates itself to the children.

f) The lack of food resulting from a lack of income means malnutrition for the whole family.

g) The individual degenerates, the family suffers, society pays the cost-in more philanthropy and taxes or by being deprived of the services of its idle workmen.

206. MEDIAEVAL UNEMPLOYMENT

The problem of unemployment, which gives us so much anxiety, confronted our forefathers also, although it was not then nearly so vast and complicated. Many causes contributed to produce it: the breakdown of the feudal system freed serfs from the obligation of rendering service to their lords, but they were not all fit for other work, and many who had given up their lands in the hope of obtaining better employment in the towns discovered too late that they had not the skill necessary for industrial occupations. Agricultural labourers were thrown out of work by the enclosure of large tracts of land for sheep farming. The developing of the manufacture of cloth so greatly increased the demand for wool that landowners found it more profitable to turn their land into pasture than to grow corn upon it. Enclosing was not carried on as extensively in our period as in the sixteenth century, but even in the reign of Henry VII Parliament declared that on account of it idleness daily increased, for where in some towns "two hundred persones were occupied and lived by their lawfull labours, nowe ben there occupied two or three herdemen." The selfish policy of the gilds in limiting the number of apprentices each master might take also caused unemployment, as many youths were prevented from acquiring the training needed to make them efficient artisans. The workmen themselves complained that the employment of aliens deprived them of work, and no doubt this was a factor in the situation. The long wars in which England was engaged also

Taken by permission from A. Abram, English Life and Manners in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 95-96. (George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1913.)

tended to swell the numbers of the unemployed: many soldiers returned from them unfit or unwilling to work. There were others also who could earn a living but who preferred to be idle; such as, for instance, a beggar described in Mr. Riley's Memorials of London who went about "barefooted and with long hair, under the guise of sanctity," pretending to be a hermit; for six years he lived "by such lies, falsities, and deceits," whereas he was able to work.

207. THE UNEMPLOYED1

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 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 underemployed, the shorttime 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.

Adapted by permission from F. A. Kellor, Out of Work, pp. 27–28. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915.)