The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-08-15
At The National Capitol
 DAILY WASHINGTON LETTER
 A Digest of Who's Who and What's What
Y WASHINGTON LETTER
OI WHO B WHO anu WHdC v By RODNEY BUTCHER
NEA Service Writer

NEA Service Writer
 Washington.--As unemployment and wagc-Gut news crashes insist I ently to the front. along with
 many predictions of a distressful
 winter, the administration is again ! charged with camounaging in an
 attempt 1, make conditions seem
 brighter tran they are. But as q
 matter Of fact the government has
 only been stressing publicity for
 such plelrant statistics as 1t can find and not stressing the others. Federal figures are not being
 falsified ard the most reliable of
 them are still being issued frankly and efar.esSly even If there is no reason to [ allyhoo them.
 Efforts of Secretary of Labor
 Doak and his U. s. employment | service tU give us something to cheer aboat have been 80 naive
 that if the country has been mis-
 informed it must be the fault of
 careless newspaper correspondents. Doak gets out report on the ex-
 banded employment service and far in the lead, in capital letters, one reads: Total employment place
 ments from April to July ]. 1881. 638, ,889." Down toward the end of
 the report you find buried the fact that the service only claims 1t has filled 2S2,t00 jobs, the rest of the
 placements having been made by
 state ageGcies. Most of tn e282,- 900 are supposed to have been har-
 vest hands who are always hired
 in large numbers at thIs period. The employment service bulletin begins by announcing: There was an improvement in the demand for certain clauses of labor throughout June" r. then tella st length about a scasonal increase of out door work, finally admitting little change in the industrial situation" !" But the bureau of labor statis- ties shows a drop of 2 per cent in employment from May to June and a decrease of 4.5 per cent in pay
 roll totais. In three of II major
 industries which this bureau sur vcys therc was decrease rather than an increase. The big cxcep- ton was canning and preserving
 and there were slight seasonal in- | creaSes in the laundry and cleaning and dyeing industries.
 January. 1880, showed de-
 crease fin employment to 3O.2 as | compared with the index figure of 100 for q supposedly average year. Anotehr IS months, ending with
 the recent June, and the figure had
 gradually gone down to 722 per
 cent.
 Indicating the extent of curtail-
 ment of working hours and wage
 cuts, the end of that payroll totals
 had decreased at q much faster
 rate. The payroll index figures
 were SIG for January. 1880. and 82.6 for June, 1881.
 Unemployment means total loss of income and sustained purchas-
 ing powe:, Wage cuts and reduced
 hours megn curtailment of income. More tnan 1,400 plants have ad-
 mitted wage reductions this year in
 reports to the statistics bureau.
 Those cutn affected about 200, 900
 workers. The total number of
 wage cuts and of employees af-
 fected sumably was several times as great, owing to the rel | alive scantiness of companies re- porting. But last January with 335 repOried wage cuts showed
 more of !Lem than any month since.
 Thirty-nine per cent of plants re- porting to the burea ureport part
 time work and the extent of part
 time is ehimated largely on such