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Show Solving the Problem of Unemployment By JANE ADDA MS. The aged poor, forlorn and out of work, are one of the most piteous Bights in the world. I recall in my d Immediate neighborhood an old carpenter car-penter who is no longer "taken on" by the contractors, French cabinet' maker whose exquisite inlay work Is no longer fashionable, an "embosser of wills and deeds" who has hetm displaced dis-placed by the typewriter all of them honest men. free from the vices of drinking or gambling, but actually suffering for lack of adequate food and I shelter. - li i- obvious thai the unemployment of able adult men under sixty-fiv years of age is abnormal and waste-lr waste-lr "ful. nor only of brawn and muscle. but often also of ripened Judgment Ls and valuable experience. Each day c his unemployment is prolonged BtlCp a man ages perceptibly loses his self-confidence, self-confidence, avoids meeting his old d friends, wonders if life is worth living, liv-ing, and if his idleness is loo lone continued he Is in danger either ot J becoming transformed from the man' who is merely unemploved and look , t ing for work to the man who is un-employable un-employable and unwilling to work, or, of falling into an habitual and dan-; dan-; gerous depression of spirit The phrases most often used in connec- j lion with the suicides which the daily , papers report in such ghastly num bers are "out of work' and "grown discouraged looking for work." This sense of uselessnes, of being wanted i.nv, in r" I- perhaps the most difficult strain to which the nervous system can be subjected. . i hi i T r unemployed men a orcai iuoo i Our Nation. In addition to llie older men there hit thousands of others suffering ihe enforced idleness and prolonged privation pri-vation due to unemployment Een in a prosperous year "from one-quarter to one-third of Ihe wage earner are turned out of work for various periods" for which the seasonable industries in-dustries are largely responsible, and to these are added "the ten per cent of wage earners engaged In manufactures, manufac-tures, who are kept as resere to meet the fluctuating monthly demands." This so-called normal number may at any moment be suddenly augmented, not only by trade depression, but also through the invention of machinery, the formation of a trust, the shutting down of mills or the closing of mines, the ermination of a large contract, the failure of a crop which supplies the raw materiai to a given industry, the overstocking of a market, and even by j the caprice of fashion. The magni lude of the loss thus caused to thft j nation first, in the million of days when producthe labor is unutilized,! I and second, in the degradation or j haracter and physique resulting from ! idleness can scarcely be exagger-K, exagger-K, a ted. A notable study of unemployment with its reaction upon national lire! was made in a report submitted by a minority of the poor law commis- j sion to the British parliament in 190!. and its recommendations have formed the basis of the crusade against pov I erty that is now being carried on in I England, The report insists that, in order to deal adequately with the j problem of the unemployed, the aged, the sick, the feeble-minded and Uie immature onth who constantly low- ; .T iue sidiiuuiu i viof,o onu induce in-duce the able bodied to Idleness, i must be entirely removed from the labor market, and must be adequate-9 adequate-9 ly taken care of by the public au thorities whose business it is to pro-Aide pro-Aide for them -For the first two j classes England Is already doing this Oldage pensions established by the go eminent in 1908 allow to the aged poor who are over seventy years ot ' age a maximum of five shillings a i week for an Individual, ten shillings for a couple these old people to be freed as far as possible from "workhouse" "work-house" treatment; the English s s tem is in many respects similar to the I Bystems of old-age insurance which have been instituted for many years I in Germany. The governmental in-surance in-surance against sickness became operative op-erative in England in 1911 and although al-though attended with difficulties, ow. ing to the opposition of the medical profession in the trades to which it now applies, it provides for medical attendance, sanitarium treatment or compensation, and withdraws from competition many people who are un- I able to work, hut who without the aid I of this insurance would continue as J vt a depressing elemen In the labor I market. America Has Not Adopted the Insur. ance System. It is difficult to estimate the amount of unemployment due to lll- K ness and trade diseases; tuberculosa r alone is responsible for withdrawing thousands of able-bodied men from Industry every year. We all know many artisan families ever haunted by the dread that illness or non-employment may at any moment separate separ-ate the members and scatter them into public institutions, because Amer-Ico Amer-Ico has avoided the insurance system so well established in other great nations na-tions to protect life against the hazards haz-ards of sickness, irregular employ- ment and old age. Many Chicago people recall th young brass finisher who a year ago entered an office and at the point ot a revolver held u pthe astonished I business man, only to drop the wea- j ron at the stenographer's appeal that ' he "looked too good a fellow for such 1 business" He was only twenty-three I "urs old and had worked steadily in a brass foundry until he was dis- j charged because he was ill from tuberculosis tu-berculosis superinduced by the brass filings jn his lungs. His discouraged wife with her child in her arms had told him that morning when he went as usual to look for work that she I hoped he would not return unless he j could bring back some money, for the baby had had nothing but tea for sup- j per and breakfast. The desperate man confided his plight to a chance; acquaintance and was by him induced to try "a sure way to get money ' Tho path between industrial disease, un- j i,,r .n'.-i olten so direct, but it is only too easy to trace it to death and orphanage. The attempt to free the labor market mar-ket from tho competition of the feeble-minded is being made iq Eng 1 land, as in oher countries, by placing them in farm colonies where it is possible to make them self-sustain m 1ng. The attmetp to curtail the labor of the young is also world-wide. When the English poor law commission, Without any apology for entering in - to the field of education, rerom -mended that "the legally permissible hours for the employment of boys must be shortened, that they must he required to spend he hours so set free in physical and technological training, train-ing, that the manufacturing of the unemployable un-employable may tease." they formulated formu-lated what the en Mr.' civilized world wu beginning to discover. England hopes in tirhe to make it Illegal for a minor to devote his whole time to work which has no edm a tlonal vahie, nml to r-quire him to attend at-tend for certain hours every Week trade schools estab hed by the local educational authorities Similar educational edu-cational requirements prevail jn many German pities for apprentices, who are obliged to attend srfiool ten hours a week out of time paid for bv their (employers; both Massachusetts and Wisconsin under special legislation are rapidly building continuation schools to which the day attendance Of working children shall be made, COmpusory. Other states are formulating formu-lating similar plans, and it is quite possible that the United States congress con-gress will grant federal aid for me chanical and agricultural education to children of the elementary and high school ages, as is now done to students in the state universities Nothing will be so valuable in reducing reduc-ing the number of underemployables as to protect children from the exhausting ex-hausting results of premature labor and to so prolong their training thai they shall be fitted for skilled Indus tries England Has a National Labor Exchange. The English poor law commissions J having eliminated from the problem of the unemployed the case of the , aged, of the sick, of th. feeble-mind ed and of the immature. hae divided i the remaining able-bodied into four distinct type?: in The men front permanent situations. (2) the men from diseoninuous employment; (3 j the underemployed, (4) the unemployable?. unem-ployable?. The commission was much concerned that men should not be al ! lowed to degenerate through en-formed en-formed unemployment and chronic. underemployment into parasitic un-employ un-employ ables. For these four classes thev urged a national labor exchange, which has I since been put into operation, whosn function is not only to ascertain and report the surplus and shortage ot I labor of particular kinds at particular ! places, and to diminish the time and i nergy now spent In looking for work I and the consequent 'leakage" between be-tween jobs, but also so to dovetail l casual and seasonable employment as to arrange for practical continuity of work for those now chronically un deremployed. When this prompt and gratuitous machinery for discovering employment fails to find it, then the "Department of Maintenance and Training" cares for the households ot I the men who are waiting for re-em- I ployment, provided that the men sub-mit sub-mit themselves to the physical and j mental training which they may prove to require. The men aie thus saved j from the disastrous effects of idle-ness, idle-ness, and. in many cases, finally re-turn re-turn to their permanent employment With their industrial value actually in-creased in-creased These national exchanges, established in 1909, were necessary for carrying out the Llo d Georce program of industrial insurance Without some such machinery the Insurance In-surance against unemployment which was enacted in England in 1910 and won I into effect lasl year, would be sine to break down owing to the excessive ex-cessive amount of "time lost" between jobs and the impossibility of knowing that every claimant had done his best to find work. The national labor exchanges ex-changes have been able to do much to restore to normal work the men ot the first two classes, but to deal with the third class is more difficult, for underemployment extends io many' hundreds of thousands of workers throughout their mm.. Inc., and is by far the worst in its evil effects I Three Types of Trades That Cause Paupers. Many paupers are the result of three types of trades; first, the subsidized sub-sidized labor trades wherein women I rmd children are paid wages insufficient insuffi-cient to maintain them at the re-i re-i quired standard of health and industrial indus-trial efficiency, so that wages must be supplemented by relatives or i charity, second, labor deteriorating trades which have sapped the energy, the capacity and the character of sue. IceSBlve generations of workers, third bare subsistence trades wherein tlio. worker is forced to such a low level in his standard of life (hat he con. tinually falls, below self -support The problems of underemployment can only be helned indirectly through a control of the sweated Industrie:-and Industrie:-and by the establishment of minimum wage boards, but meantime much may be accomplished through public opinion opin-ion if we all realize that when the sewing women who make our gar ments are paid such a meager wage that their support must he ..Red out by charily, we, the purchasers of those garments, are paupers and in a very real sense the recipients oi charitable doles For the fourth class of unemployables, after their status has been carefully dei erniined, both England and Germany establish detention de-tention colonies of a reformatory type where men are compulsorily detained and kept to work under discipline. For the independent and Belf-reliant man out of work the farm colony is a 1 totalis inadequate remedy and the de-tention de-tention colony an insuli, bui for the man considering whom it jg doubt- I ful whether ho does not work be- j cause he cannot find it or whether he does not work because he will not ! and the two states of mind are con-Btantly con-Btantly commingled and sometimes found in he same individual these colonies are most valuable That even confirmed vagrants shall not be subjected lo arrest until means or re tarnation have been tried Is in line with the development In all other philanthropy which look-; toward pie. vention rather than punishment Thousands of Women Unemployed All the Time. While tt is estimated that fewer women than men are unemployed, out of the six million working women in the United States, at any given moment mo-ment doubtless thousands of them are out of work. For the non-English speaking immigrant girls, a large number of whom come over without their families, for the girls in the dressmaking, millinery and tailoring trades whose work Is so dependent upon the seasons, for the Factory girl Buddenly laid off becnuse a huge establishment es-tablishment has overstocked the market, mar-ket, Ihere must be many out-of-work periods. Only a week ago a very pretty youriK irl, a telephone operator, came to Chicago from N'ew York hoping b a change of work and climate to recover her hralih. she arrived with six dollars, five of which eager for respectable surrounding- she had Bpent for a room in an expensir pari of the city When her remaining dollar dol-lar was reduced to fourteen cents and no work had yet been found, starved and discoursed she one afternoon took two pairs of gloves from a department de-partment store where she was applv-(ng applv-(ng for work. She reached the street I with her theft undiscovered, but bj-I bj-I came so roubled and conscience jstricken that half an hour laler sh' returned the gloves to the counter and v as then arrested by the detective for Shoplifting. It would be difficult to find either in New York or Chicago a more honest and uprlt:hl girl than sin had always been, In tlje raids! of her fatigue and bewilderment she constantly said "It had only founu work; if I had only found work!" Many people especially those living in rural communities for whom it is difficult to secure "help" either for the household or harvest field during dur-ing the busiest months of the year, ai prone to judge the entire problem prob-lem of the unemployed from the tramp or vaRrant who begs for food anu lodging, but persistently shirks any jobs or permanent work offered to him. It is bu natural that to tho minds of prople who have repc.itcil ly had this experience there are no unemployed except thoso who will not work, but In point, of fact unemployment unem-ployment is one of the most compll cated and diflicult problems of mod -eu society. |