The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1915-04-03
An Unemployment Program


manent for the relief of unemploy-
ment. In the most critical period of
unemployment ever know in this
country we have, failed again to ac-
knowledge that no" local power can
adequately deal with it.
In the first place congress has done
nothing to furnish work. Ten thou
sand dollars was appropriated For
federal census of unemployment. Not
a cent was appropriated to hasten
necessary public works to draw off
the desperate thousands cast off this
winter from the building trades and
from private industry everywhere.
The unemployed do not need to be
counted again; they need work.
Reactionary Congress.
Fearful of appropriating moneys
for pork barrel projects in the rivers
and harbors bill, congress took the
safe line of allowing only enough
money to continue work that is al
ready under way and cannot be in
terrupted. It saw no way of wedding
out the pork barrel projects and sub
stituting other really necessary works.
Representative Britten proposed a
employed in citizen soldiery. No.
body proposed a bill to draw them
off in federal cohorts building dams,
dredging channels and clearing lands
for homeseekers and for develop
ment
Secondly congress has done nothing
to organize the labor market. Three
important bills capable Of doing this
have been allowed to drift silently
into committee. The president be-
lieves, according to his Indianapolis
speech, that a system Of federal en-
ment agencies would be a good thing.
But if they will ever be needed, they
are needed now. The less work there
is, the more need to look for it eco
nomically. The federal government is
the only economic distributor of labor.
No lesser power can prick the indus
trial war map of this country, show
the lineup of labor and industry, the
advances and the retreats. .
A Notable Book.
BY curious coincidence, in the
same week that congress in closing
files this negative unemployment rec
ord, there appears the first compre-
ever made in America, and the first
definite presentation of the problem
as a federal responsibility
The book is "Out of Work" The au-
thor is Frances A. Kellor, former chief
of the Bureau of Industries and I'M
migration of the State of New York,
and now vice chairman of the COM
mittee for immigration of the state
of New York, and now vice chairman
of the Committee for Immigrants in
America, under the auspices of which
the book is published.
It is important because it's program
of federal responsibility is not pre-
sented as a theory. The conclusion
Interpretation of the failure of the
20 already existing state bureaus to
deal with the problem, and the lirni-
tations of the cities in attempting to.
deal with it single-handed, without
federal aid and supervision. The city,
| not the state, according to Miss Kel-
lor, is the logical unit for the dis
tribution of labor. The state unit
has no correspondence to industrial
| conditions. The labor reserve cities,
if united by a common federal su-
pervision, have.
''Out Of Work., while insisting upon
the immediate need for organizing
the nations labor market, recognizes
that the present disorganized labor
market is only one of the causes of
unemployment, and at present not
the main cause-which is lack Of
work Federal exchanges are not a
complete solution for a problem that
! is, at base, INDUSTRIAL; but they can
do two things; conserve the resources
! of unemployed men and women in
| search for work; and furnish the
! skeleton for the national industrial
policy which this country is the last
of the great nations to approximate
The book contains a longtime pre-
ventive program, and shorttime
program designed for, crises like the
! present. In it's treatment of emer-
! gency measures, whether official or
civic, as we'll as in it's treatment of
permanent constructive measures, the
book is a protest against duplication
of effort on the part of various agen-
cies, and decentralization of work. Its
! recommendations are in a. marked
sense definite and specific. 1t is not
a. treatise; it is a program-for con-
| gress, for legislatures, for city cou:-
ellis, for civic bodies-and even Cor
individual citizens
J -1
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