The greatest problem in modern industry as well as the
greatest curse to the laboring classes, is unemployment. While
unemployment has always existed under all systems of labor, it assumed
added significance when the introduction of the wage system threw
every worker upon his own resources and made him responsible for the
care of himself and his family. Modern industry is sensitive and
unstable and its delicate mechanism, very likely to get out of order;
credit and fashion, to mention no others, are factors that make for
instability, and these are essentially modern. Professor Marshall is
of the opinion that the factory system has not increased inconstancy
of employment, but has simply rendered it plainer by localizing it.
But whether more or fewer than in earlier times, the number of the
unemployed in modern industry is appallingly great. It is not easy to
estimate correctly the extent and amount of this evil and we
accordingly find considerable variations in the statistical
presentations of fact. In 1885 two investigations of the amount of
employment were made, one by Carroll D. Wright, in his report as
United States Commissioner of Labor for 1886, and the other by the
Massachusetts Bureau of Labor in its report for 1887. Mr. Wright
defines the unemployed very narrowly as “those who under prosperous
times would be fully employed, and who, during the time mentioned,
were seeking employment”; using the term in this restricted sense he
concluded that 7½ per cent of the working population engaged in
manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, and trade and transportation
were idle during the year, which moreover he considered one of extreme
depression. The Massachusetts statistics, on the other hand, were
presented as indicative of general conditions in normal years and may
safely be regarded as such. According to this report, 30 per cent of
the total number of breadwinners in the state had been unemployed at 91
their principal occupations on an average of 4.11 months in the year
covered; some of these found work at other or secondary occupations.
But the net result of the investigation was well put in the terse
statement of the report, that “about one-third of the total persons
engaged in remunerative labor were unemployed at their principal
occupation for about one-third of the working time.” At the lowest
estimate the whole working population lost on the average almost
one-tenth of their working time. The loss of such a proportion of the
community’s productive force, with all the demoralization attendant
upon irregular or no labor, is evidence of a problem of grave import.
Unemployment is such a broad term and covers so many different ideas
that it will be well to classify the unemployed before proceeding
further. They may be logically divided into the following classes: I.
The temporarily unemployed, who comprise (a) those certain of work
again, as efficient workmen who are temporarily out of work owing to
seasonal variations, shut downs, etc.; (b) those without such
prospect, a group which again divides into two groups, namely, (1)
efficient and industrious workmen who have been thrown out of work by
a change in fashion, the introduction of new machinery, foreign
competition, a prolonged depression, etc., and (2) those whose work is
essentially fluctuating and casual in its nature, as casual day
laborers, charwomen, etc. II. The permanently unemployed, consisting
in turn of (a) the “won’t-works,” as tramps, and (b) the
“can’t-works,” or the defective and dependent classes generally. Such
a classification renders much easier the analysis both of the causes
and of the cure of unemployment.
The first question that presents itself in any discussion of the
causes of unemployment is whether it is due primarily to personal
causes, as inefficiency or intemperance, or to industrial causes over
which the individual has no control. “Personal causes are those 92
mental, moral, and physical defects which show themselves either in
the inability and inefficiency of the workman or in his unwillingness
to work. Here are included all the varieties of personal inaptitude,
ranging from idiocy, intemperance, and vice to old age, sickness, and
accident.”[25] Such a comprehensive definition includes many cases, of
course, where no blame can be attached to the individual, and yet each
one of these causes is personal, that is, it does not affect at the
same time a whole group, as an industrial depression would do. Persons
included in this group are always on the margin of employment; in bad
times the first to be discharged, in good times they are the last to
be employed. Nor is the cause of their lack of employment always easy
to give; it may be itself the result of industrial accident or
unhealthful occupation, or the result of heredity, evil habits and
associations, and defective education. We may present two tables
giving briefly the causes of poverty and unemployment. The first gives
the causes of poverty ascribed by the charity organization societies
of New York, Boston, and Baltimore to applicants for relief: