The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-01-31
Unemployment In War and Peace
By GRAHAM TAYLOR

Exclusive service The Survey press bureau.)
 Unemployment is testing the patriot ism and national resources of all the peoples at war. The test in the rear was instantly recognized to be one and the same with the test at the front The military army and the industrial army were considered equally vital to the national defense.
 However, industrial depression had hitherto been left to crush whom it might however, unemployment had been regarded as a misfortune to be borne as best 1t might by the individual or by the class, however the right to work had been denied and the assertion of i, denounced-now without moment $ hesitation this laissez faire attitude to- ward unemployment was abandoned am the nations recognized the claim ot their people to be kept at work. As soon as each Parliament was faced by the possibility of war, 1t squarely faced the certainty of unemployment as na- tional crisis which could be met only by national resources
 I> War Budgets Provide Work
 The necessity of making some pro- vision in advance to meet the lack ot work was anticipated by the govern ments, before 1t began to be felt seri- ously by the workers themselves. In the very first war budgets large appropria- tions were included to pay for public work undertaken to compensate in part at least, for the decrease in private employment. Among the earliest meas- ures for national defense taken in Ger many, France and Britain. were ena- bprivirev nd local administrations to protect and promote employment Public work al- ready undertaken was thus continued. New enterprises requiring labor on a large scale were initiated. The British Parliament added to its first appropria- ton of $500,000,0 ,000 for war purposes, another of $20,000,000 to keep the build- ing trades busy in erecting and renovat- ing dwellings for better housing of the working classes. Housing thus became a national issue, as a legislative prin- ciple at least
 In Germany new public enterprises have been started by many municipali ties, urged by the Reichstag and sup plemented by the imperial government Experience in social legislation enabled both these nations the more readily and effectively to mobilize all their national resources, not only for the defense of
 
 of their industrial forces at home. Arms and the man" found it's equiva- lent in tools and the man."
 Crises of Peace
 If the certainty and disastrous of fects of economic depression and un- employment could thus be anticipated, forefended, and provided for, in any measure, by people distracted and dis traught by war, is not the possibility suggested of mobilizing the greater resources of forethought and reserve capital available in times of peace, to meet the same sort of an emergency In nations industrial life?
 We act as though such an emergency would never come again, however many times we well remember it to have come When it does come, we do nothing di- rectly to meet it. Indeed, with more cau- ton than is truly cautious, we diminish our commercial and industrial activity thus making matters worse. Although the classes who most suffer by industrial depression are least responsible for 1t and least able to protect themselves from it. they are unjustly left to bear the brunt of the burden and to suffer disaster from which many of them never recover either their self-independence or their industrial efficiency.
 National Strength
 Here then is the sorry contrast between mobilization for war and the lack of it in peace. Under the urgency of war the nation instinctively feels that the strength of all is impaired by the weakness of any, that its whole resource is available to conserve every vital force, that as each individual and class is needed by all, so all that the nation has is available for each. This is the justice newly expe- rienced in Germany, Britain and France