Montana labor news., 1939-04-06
THE FUTURE OF
UNFRAMED YOUTH
Continued from Page 81

III WOulQ ilOl NC dlllloo cNtA
at this gathering to call attention tc
what is happening. 1t might serve
as a sort of inventory or analysis Of
the situation without which we can
not set up a training program.
In six years from 1919 to 1925
there was a decline of 1,675,0 0C
workers in four leading industries
Agriculture, Manufacturing and Me-
chanical, Railroading and Mining. A
7 per cent decline in six years Of
prosperity. By 1929 the decline had
reached 100000. (U. S. Dept. OF
Agriculture From 1914 to 1927
production rose from 100 to 17O
points but the number of laborers
rose only from 100 to lis points.
The Boston and Maine Railroad
has a freight handling mechanism
whereby one man takes the place of
at least 400. In the New York paper
box industry the number of workers
had declined 80 er cent since 1914.
Output increased 121 per cent.
From 1925 to 1887 it is estimated
that one-fifth of the men have been
eliminated in the railroad industry.
That is, what required the labor Of
five men in 1925, four do now. In
Is years, the number of unit hours
declined from 100 to Sc.
From 1914 to 1885 the productivity
rose 1903 per cent.
w. D. Westerweldt, president OF
the All American Neurological So
ciety, contends that twelve million
workers can do all the work neces-
sary to feed, clothe and shelter US
Fred Henderson, in his Economic
Consequences of Power Production, u
says that without further increase in
knowledge of power and technical
processes, or of material, we could
multiply production ten times. Ralph
E. Flanders, president of the Ameri-
can Society of Mechanical Engineers,
says that our present machinery
properly managed could flood our
country with goods and material far
beyond the hopes Of the most fan
tastic Utopian dreamer. Buckmeis-
ter Fuller says that man is today
$40 times stronger than Adam and
that four million Americans working
So seven-hour days per year could
keep up every survival need. Stuart
Chase says that since 1880 mans
productivity has increased 40 times
But these opinions of prominent
social and industrial engineers re-
garding the relative Importance Of
production is not the only evidence
that youth faces another job besides
providing the material means of pro-
duction and that educational empha-
sis must be shifted correspondingly
In the face of this tremendous in
crease in power and productivity we
have, to quote our President, one
third of our people %ill-housed, ill
clothed and ill-fed. We so empha-
sized industry and became SO eff
cient that we worked ourselves moi
only out of a job, but out of a home,
out of clothes, out of food. And yet
the tragedy of late 'twenty-nine and
thirty was not the mere shortage
Of material things.
Millions of young men and women
who should have been formulating
work habits-healthy thought-habits
right attitudes toward home and
country-were left to drift, to wan
der about aimlessly without jobs and
without means for education. Good
men began to wonder if this was to
be a lost generation.
Yes, we know now through bitter
experience what we should have
~foreseen and through education pre-
vented. But has the crisis that came
upon us so suddenly and viciously in
1929 taught us enough so that we
shall prevent its recurrence?
The plight in which we found our
selves when the crash came in 1929
was an inevitable result of some
thing that had been creeping upon
US for decades. And this thing came
upon us as a result of a lack of
understanding Of the total situation
in our economic life.
That is why I am dwelling on the
Importance of having the right con-
cept of and the proper definition of
Trained Youth" That is the rea-
son I went to some length in show
ing that the distributive and pro-
ductive industries are only a part
Of youths total job and that the
training for them should receive only
its proportionate share.
/ am not an educator and do not
pretend to speak with authority on
educational processes, I am a lay
man, having spent most of my life
in the ranks of organized labor. But
to a group Of people like this, | take
courage to say that something is
wrong with the education forces.
Something must be wrong. This
word picture of one-third of our
people living below the subsistence
level in an age of abundance brought
about by a multiplication of power
and productivity is a paradox. Evil
IDENTIFY we have not learned to live
together. And quite as evidently,
democracy cannot survive under
such inconsistent conditions which
e Ta--