The New York herald., 1922-02-02
Compers on Unemployment.


SAMUEL GoMpERs and THE New
York HERALD are in accord as to the
undesirability of establishing unem-
ployment insurance in this country.
His reason for opposing such sys-
tenn is entirely different from ours.
The objection we see to unemploy-
ment insurance and the objection
governments which have tried the
system see to it is that it puts pre-
MUM on thriftlessness among too
many persons who do not give
enough thought, as 1t is, to putting
something by for a rainy day or old
age. And when you put premium
on thriftlessness among human beings
you promote Indifference OH their
part as to whether they have employ
ment or not, so long as unemploy-
ment insurance or other schemes
enable them to get along in some
fashion.
The objection GoMPERs sees to such
insurance is that it recognizes unem-
ployment as permanent institution,
whereas he declares that unemploy-
ment is controllable and that there
should be no such thing. He goes so
far, In fact, as to charge that unem-
ployment is "hand made" by employ
ers. What he means by this is that
either capital curtails production to
enable it to make high price for
low supply or that capital seeks op-
portunities to reduce wage scales by
shutting down plants and throwing
labor out of work.
But by far the greater part of un-
employment in this rapidly growing
and big building country always has
been the doing of the workers
themselves in either one of two ways.
One of these ways is when they in
sist, as in the present depression,
upon wages and working conditions
that an industry cannot grant and
continue to do business. This is the
trouble to-day in the coal districts,
in the building trades and in other
fields where hundreds Of thousands
are unemployed simply because it
costs more to do the work than that
work is worth to the public which
must pay for it. And as conse-
ouence of the inactivity in the build
ing and similar industries 1t is
largely the trouble with the steel
industry, the copper industry, even
the railroads.
The other way in which unemploy-
ment is made by the workers in
America is their propensity to go on
strike at times when their common
sense ought to tell them they can be
dispensed with, certainly temporarily
and possibly permanently.
Tens of thousands of workers in
the packing industry have been on
strike for two months against wage
readjustments agreed to by their
own representatives. Now they want
to go back to their old jobs on the
agreed terms they repudiated two
months ago. But their places are
generally filled. The majority of the
strikers cannot go back now on any
terms. The packing houses have been
operating without them and will be
able to operate without them.
1t was the same here in New York
with the milk drivers. They were
soon and utterly defeated in their
strike for wage increases, but they
could not get their places back.
1t was so in Kansas, where union
miners who had been called out by
HowAT. their president, would not
go back to work when ordered back
by their international union, would
not go back even when ordered back
by HowAT himself. Now they are
asking for their old places, but they
cannot get them. The jobs are filled;
the Kansas mines have all the men
they can use in supplying their coal
markets and they will not turn Off
the men who went to work when the
strikers quft.
All over the country there is the
same story to tell, whether as to
stevedores and marine workers on the
Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, or
mill workers in New England. or
building trade workers in Chicago.