the mass of wage-earners can be measured by the difference between the aggregate number of hands required by all establishments at their busiest seasons and the aggregate minimum number employed when business is at its lowest ebb. To be sure, this difference does not represent the amount of unemployment at any given date, since the seasonal variations are not simultaneous in all industries and a considerable portion of the unskilled laborers readily shift from one industry to another. But every change of position involves some period of unemployment, as it requires some time to find a new job. This is clearly demonstrated by the census statistics of manufactures. The difference between the greatest and the least average number employed during any month in the year is far short of the difference between the aggregate greatest and the aggregate least number employed in all establishments during the same year, as shown in Table 16 next below: 1Compiled from XII. Census Report on Manufactures, Part I, p. 59, Table 3; Census Report on Manufactures, 1905, Part I, p. lxxix., Table In order to ascertain the total number of wage-earners who had steady employment during the year, the number employed by each individual manufacturer on the slackest day in his own business must be added to similar numbers for all others, though the days may not have coincided. It appears that this number was less than the lowest monthly average, which means that even in the worst month of the year more people are wanted on an average than can be given permanent employment. On the other hand, while during the best month of the year 1899 only fourteen additional wage-earners were needed over and above every one hundred who had permanent employment, actually four times as many persons were hired for temporary jobs during the same year. In 1904, the proportion was still more striking, the number of persons hired temporarily was nearly six times greater than the actual temporary force needed at the busiest time during the year. In either year there were over one half as many temporary jobs as permanent positions. Of course, these figures comprise many duplications; there may have been few wage-earners over the greatest number that could actually have been employed at the same time; in that case each of the temporary employees had about four different jobs during the year 1899 and six during the year 1904. The unemployment intervening between one temporary job and another clearly did not depend upon the number of applicants for jobs, but was determined by the vicissitudes of business. The whole problem of unemployment is admirably elucidated in Mr. Beveridge's exhaustive treatise on the subject, from which the following is condensed: A general and normal excess of the supply of labor over the demand appears to be explicable only by an excessively rapid increase of population. But such an explanation does not square with the facts showing irreducible minimum of unemployment precisely in those industries which have grown with exceptional rapidity in recent years. The general formula for the supply of labor in an industry appears to be this: for work requiring, if concentrated at one spot, at most ninety eight men, there will actually be eighty in regular employment; there will be a hundred in all, so that at all times two at least are out of work. The twenty, however, are as much part of the industrial system as are the eighty; the reserve is as indispensable as the regulars. The idleness, now of some, now of others, of the reserve is mainly responsible for the irreducible minimum of unemployment. The figures here given have only an illustrative value; the proportion of regular and reserve and irreducible minimum vary from trade to trade. The principle is of the greatest generality. The rule for each trade is to have more men than are called for together even at the busiest moment. The normal state of every industry is to be overcrowded with labor, in the sense of having drawn into it more men than can ever find employment in it at any one time. This is the direct consequence of the work of each industry being distributed between many separate employees each subject to fluctuations of fortune. It depends upon the nature of the demand for labor, not upon the volume of the whole supply. To speak of the reserve of labor in a trade may become, in fact, only another way of speaking of the whole volume of unemployment in it. The change, however, is not one of words alone. It implies a revolution of mental attitude. It involves perception of unemployment, not as a thing standing by itself-an inexplicable excrescence on the industrial system-but as a thing directly related to that system and as necessary to it as are capital and labor themselves. Unemployment is not to be identified as a problem of general over-population. Unemployment arises because, while the supply of labor grows steadily, the demand for labor, in growing, varies incessantly in volume, distribution, and character. This variation in several of its forms at least flows directly from the control of production by many competing employers. It is obvious that, so long as the industrial world is split up into separate groups of producers each group with a life of its own, and growing or decaying in ceaseless attrition upon its neighbors there must be insecurity of employment. Unemployment, in other words, is to some extent at least part of the price of industrial competition— part of the waste without which there could be no competition at all.' 2. Unemployment and Immigration It has been shown that unemployment does not depend upon the volume of the supply of labor, but is determined by the nature of the demand for labor, which produces a "relative surplus-population."2 Is it not possible, however 1 Beveridge, loc. cit., pp. 70, 76, 99, 100, 103, 235. 2 Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. I., ch. xxv., sec. 3. that the effects of "the normal glutting of the labor market" may be aggravated by immigration? It is asserted, indeed, on the strength of the investigation of the Immigration Commission "that the point of complete saturation has already been reached in the employment of recent immigrants in mining and manufacturing establishments. The Commission holds "that even with the remarkable expansion of industry during the past few years there has been created an oversupply of unskilled labor, which "is reflected in a curtailed number of working days."3 It is further argued that the oversupply of unskilled labor indirectly affects the skilled trades; more workers who might otherwise find employment as unskilled laborers are pushed up the scale to compete for skilled positions. This is especially felt in slack seasons when skilled mechanics would welcome any kind of work, even unskilled, which would tide them over the hard times. But the oversupply of unskilled labor restricts their opportunities in this field and intensifies competition in the skilled trades. | When two competitors apply for one job in an overstocked labor market, the cheaper man will outbid the other. It is accordingly inevitable that the immigrant with a lower standard of living must displace the American workman. If this theory is correct, we must find a higher percentage of unemployment among the native than among the foreignborn breadwinners. In fact, however, we find the following percentages of unemployment ascertained by the census for 1 Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 13. 2 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 197. 3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 39. The Commission does not consistently adhere to this view. Elsewhere, in discussing the causes of the outward movement of immigrants leaving the United States permanently, the Commission says: "That it is not due to lack of opportunity for employment, except in a period of depression, is evident from the fact that there is a steady influx of European laborers who have little or no difficulty in finding employment here."—Ibid., vol. 4 (in press). 1900: native white males, 21.2 per cent; foreign white males 21.0 per cent.1 The difference between the two classes is negligible. The figures do not sustain the theory that the immigrants have an advantage over the native American workmen in the matter of securing employment. Has the "cheap immigrant a better chance to hold his job, once secured, than the native American workman? An answer to this question is found in the following table reproduced from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 87. TABLE 17. PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN MALE IRON AND 1 Occupations at the XII. Census, p. ccxxvi. The census averages for unemployment among female breadwinners are not reliable. The highest ratios of unemployment were found among school teachers, 61.2 per cent, and in agricultural pursuits, 44.3 per cent, (p. ccxxxi), whereas the ratio for manufactures was 22.4 per cent, for domestic and personal service, 17.1 per cent, and for trade and transportation, 11.1 per cent (p. ccxxviii). The teachers' vacation was included by the compilers of the census data under unemployment. Similarly, we find that in most of the census ta les on occupations female members of farmers' families who were helping on the farm were lumped together with hired help under the common designation of "agricultural laborers." These "farm laborers (members of family)" numbered two thirds of all "agricultural laborers" (ibid., p. 7). The part of the year when there was no work for them on the farm was also counted as "unemployment." |