The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1914-07-15
PSYCHOLOGY STRIKES IN.
Excellent Opportunities for studyins the
science at Albany.

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ALBANY, July 14,-This city offers to-
day a splendid opportunity for the
study Of the psychological depression
business is undergoing, and any inves-
tigator who desires to add to his stock
OF knowledge has an ample field for
inquiry here. Some Of the employers
Of labor believe that President Wilson
himself might probably spend few
hours in Albany: not in the State
Education building, but in those less
pretentious but Individually essential
quarters OF the town where men go to
ask for work when the alternative Of
belt shortening has become boresome.
But the men who hold this opinion, II
must be confessed, are crude persons,
many Of whom do not possess even the
bachelors degree.
Albany occupies curious position in
dustrially. 1t is the centre OF a great
and growing manufacturing section. 1t
Is engaged in the prosecution of extern
sive public works. Large building en-
terprises are in hand. The city is an
important transfer point in land and
water transportation. For these rea-
sons 1t attracts some men in search OF
employment, while others gravitate to
1t as they journey through the country.
Two main currents Of itinerant labor,
vulgarly called tramp labor meet here,
one tending to the south and east, the
| other to the west.
| Let the term tramp labor" have It's
true significance. II does not signify
vsgrancy, shiftlessness. or that ad-
venturous spirit that prefers the open
highway and the possible minimum OF
exertion to a settled domcile and as
sured employment. 1t intimates no
willing vagabondage. and 1t conveys
nothing OF criminality. II means only
laborers looking for work, seeking en-
ployment with no Interior hint OF chari-
ty, anxious only for tasks in which they
can succeed and opportunities to estab-
| lish themselves In prosperity which
they understand in practicable terms of
bread and meat II they are unable to
describe II in the verbal formula of
the school room.
Men who for a third OF century
have had to do with this labor market
hereabout assert to-day that certainly
not since 1898 have the ranks OF this
army of applicants been 80 swollen as
they are to-day. From all points of the
compass men looking for work, not
fastidiously seeking employment. assail
gang bosses. foremen, agents and prin-
cipals. They have come by boat. by
train, by trolley. on foot; they have
sought along the road to exchange their
skill and strength for the essential coin
Of the country. without which even
psychologists are unhappy; they have
passed the stage in which they stipu-
late that they must work at their
trades; they have even advanced be-
yond the point at which the unionism
or non-unionism Of their fellows is ac-
counted OF Importance. They have
families, not few of them, somewhere
families that they thank God can live
for a little without them. perhaps bet
ter without them: or families whose
sufferings they have deliberately sought
to avoid seeing or aggravating by their
presence.
Here is a subject for psychologists to
consider in these psychology saturated
days many simple and partially edu.
Gated men and women actually find the
professedly temporary breakup OF the
family more to their liking than a
united starvation. Curiously the process
OF starvation does little among ordinary
folk to promote harmony. This singu'
lar fact is attributed by some student.
to lack Of education In the mass OF the
population.
The employment aaent uses few ques
tons when he wants labor, and fewel
, still when he does not. He has recourse
to signs displayed at the entrance to thu
works. At present the demand FOL
placards reading:
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