Connecticut western news., 1878-08-29
AN INTERESTING REVIEW.
HE uNEMp1o YnD LABOR OF THE oouNTE

A useful piece of work has been &C., complained by the Massachusetts Bureau ot Statistics. Toward the end of last June circular letters were sent by the chief of the bureau to the assessors ot every town in the State, asking for a careful estimate of the number of skilled workmen in mechanical and manufactur- ing industries, as we'll as of the number of unskilled laborers, ont of employment in each town on June l., The cities were also carefully canvassed. Answers were received from 325 towns, leaving 51 to hear from, which, in the aggregate, how ever, contain 8 population of but 77, 459 out of the entire population of 1,651, ,912 in the State. From the terms of the cir cular, also, the failure to get answers from these towns may reasonably be as- sumed to imply that little or no unem- ployed labor exists in them, so that the information acquired by the bureau is practically complete.
 The result of the whole inquiry is that in the nineteen cities of the State there are unemployed 4, 40 skilled and 7,695 unskilled laborers, and in the 325 towns 4,120 skilled and 5,557 unskilled labor CTS. The number of unemployed males amounts, therefore, in the entire State, so far as heard from, to 1872. Adding thirty per cent. for females, which, &C., cording to the last census, is the relative proportion of the sexes engaged in in dustrial pursuits, brings the number up to 2S,508. This includes some 5000 op- eratives in Fall River, where several large mills were closed in consequence of the rascalities of their officers, and are now running again.
 Assuming, however, that the number of the unemployed in Massachusetts is actually 28,5O8, or two per cent. of the population, and that this is fair average of the whole country, then, out of the 40, 00O,0 900 in the United States not over 800, ,000 are unemployed workmen, which falls far short of the 5000, ,OOO concern ing whose sufferings so much has been written and said. And when we take into account that, excepting in New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, whose population alto gether amounts to less than one-third of that of the entire country, people are mostly occupied with agriculture, and are not suffering for want of work, Q considerable reduction must be made even from this small figure. It is quite safe to say that there are in the United States at this moment not more than 100000 unemployed mechanics and laborers, male and female, skilled and unskilled, or only one in every hundred of the population. Some portion of this number must, from various causes, necessarily be unemployed, even in the best of times, so that the misery caused by the present business depression has been in every way exaggerated.
 An interesting suggestion is made by the Chief of the Massachusetts Bureau in regard to the cause of the want of em- ployment for many of the working people of that State. It is that their places have been taken by the sons and daugh- ters of hitherto well-to-do families, but whom the pressure of the times has com pelled to seek living by work. The State census of 1875 showed 13,96l males and Az, 156 females over the age of fifteen who lived at home doing nothing. Of this large number many must now. owing tO financial revarses ba com petitors in the labor market for employ ment and so far as they have succeeded in getting it, they have displaced cor responding number previously employed. The suggestion is plausible one, and deserves consideration.