to our attention with startling emphasis, and which we have come to realize can be solved only by active interest from many sources. The little red schoolhouse has long passed away, and even the modern high school and college, efficient as they are, are inadequate to solve the whole problem of public education.

The Junior Division of the United States Employment Service is a new federal agency toward this end. It was instituted to aid in one of the most serious problems of reconstruction-the replacement in school or in industry of its young war-workers. Historically speaking, it is an outgrowth of the Boys' Working Reserve, a war emergency effort to bring organized boy-power to the aid of agricultural production. The value of this work is so apparent, and the possibility of its extension so tremendous, that what was effected in its organization and co-operation, was transformed into a plan to carry on the work and extend it by means of the Junior Division of the United States Employment Service.

This genesis, however, is only apparent and incidental; actually, the Junior Division is the outcome of the growing realization that the schools must function in a new manner to meet the demands of new times; of a deepening conviction in the minds of our best school men and business men that we must not only educate, but educate to meet the complexities of modern life; and that America owes her boys and girls a debt which is not paid when she merely provides schools, which they, in large numbers, may be unable to attend, or which, if they do attend, may fail to equip them for the life they must lead as citizens in the new America.

The Junior Division thus offers a contribution on a national scale in the solution of the combined problems of school and industry, as they touch boys and girls from fourteen to twenty-one. It aims to effect a co-operation between the two which will, in the first place, insure to the child the maximum benefit from both school and work, and which will, through the wise adjustment of trained vocational and employment agents, help the school in planning its curriculum, and insure to the world of business and industry the maximum benefits accruing from the proper worker at the proper job. It recognizes further the responsibility of the state in the education of the majority of juniors who leave the schools at about the age of fourteen. For the census of 1910 shows that 51.3 per cent of our total boy and girl population from fourteen to twentyone years of age, is in wage-earning occupations. The recent census may properly show an even greater number.

The fact that the schools were inadequate in som economic or personal needs of these children, does not menu of obligation in their education, or can shift

Schools unlinked with industry are year

of young workers, undirected, and unable to
to the conditions of the industrial world in whi
industry, finding these workers unfit, wastes much

vast amount of good human material in a manner whic
realize that it is human material.

This, then, is the function agency which prepares this huma benefit of both, and to form that lin fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys a

past 120 years. Prices rise, profits increase, everybody is confident, speculation over-reaches itself; then comes the collapse. Many workingmen and farmers think that the present depression was brought about by a conspiracy of financiers. But the causes occurred two years ago. It was the over-expansion of 1919 that produced the contraction of 1921. There was no conspiracy then. To prevent unemployment the over-expansion that precedes it must be prevented. Work must somehow be spread out, much as the unions try to do it, but in a way more business-like.

There are, indeed, other causes of unemployment besides the credit cycle. The "labor turnover," up to an uncertain point, is useful. It is liberty to quit the employer and look for a better job, or liberty to dismiss the worker and look for a better one. Consequently, in the Huber bill, following the British example, the first three days of unemployment are not counted as such. Unemployment compensation begins the fourth day.

Summer and winter seasons bring unemployment, but seasonable industries are adjustable. The cycle of seasons comes regularly and can be discounted, or one industry can be dovetailed with another, like coal and ice. The best work that has, so far, been done in stabilizing employment has been that of stabilizing seasonal employment, as when the Dennison Manufacturing Company, by many well-known devices, succeeded in spreading out their original seasonal industry into a steady allround employment covering many dovetailed jobs. During the war this company took the next step by making provision against the unemployment of business depression. When attention is focused on the credit cycle, it is the banker, more than the employer, who becomes the stabilizer of employment. During the recent overexpansion of business a certain manufacturer came to his banker asking a loan of $250,000 in order to enlarge his plant. The banker turned the application over to the "industrial engineer" recently added to the personnel of the bank, who showed the manufacturer that, by better labor management, he could get along without the loan. Six or eight months afterward the manufacturer was profuse with thanks to the banker. The banking system, which is the center of the credit system, more than the employer, must be looked to for the mechanism of stabilizing employment. The difficulty is that one employer or one bank cannot do it alone. It is a collective responsibility, of the credit system, and uniform action is necessary. If one manufacturer is prevented from overexpanding, he sees his competitors get the business. But, if cor petitors are prevented, he is more nearly content.

circum

This uniform pressure of the credit system is invoked by the provision of the Huber bill that when an employer lays off a man he shall pay him a dollar a day for a period of thirteen weeks, or less if another job is found meanwhile. This, with an added 10 cents for support of employment offices, creates a possible liabi of $85, taken on with every man employed, and maturing when he is laid of stances it should be expected that when an employer goes to credit in order to expand, the banker will seek to assure him. able to continue the employment or find the man another jo or else pay him that possible $85.

Two questions arise: one regarding the practicability of the of unemployment insurance; the other regarding the public policy On the question of practicability we have the experience of Eurch accident compensation laws. When the British law was revised in 19 1

tional be

way, and thighteenth century, emphasized capital and labor as productive, meaning by "capital" Iping them stored-up labor and by "labor" the producing power of workers. But these do not unities produce wealth. Modern capitalism arose from the business revolution of the sevento twentyeenth century which displaced feudalism by security of investments and liberty of ol are equal business. The credit system is simply that confidence in the future that springs from e as useful fulfilment of contracts and private property. "Capital and labor" might produce ion as mea few things without credit, but it would be the hand-to-mouth production of feudalism akes up or communism.

nd determine

Labor, as a class, breaks down on discipline depreciation accounts, on absolescence g third sh of plant, on cash reserves that protect profits. The Knights of Labor was labor's onal guida last grand attempt to manage industry on a co-operative basis. Even profit-sharing fails with the psychology which expects profits each week as wages, before it is known is very you whether profits are earned. Labor, as a class, cannot manage industry. Individuals demanded: rising out of the class can do it, but then they become business men. Labor, as a class, ffices und includes young workers coming in, men and women coming and going, individuals int office who have failed in business. They can manage industry only by popular election of th the v bosses. But democracy never would have elected, or at least re-elected, Andrew very pes Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller to manage the steel or oil business. Successful busie, we take ness men elect themselves by "natural selection" in the struggle for profits, through worker: ability to "hire and fire" subordinates and thus command the confidence of investors. file lists But modern capitalism fails in giving that security to jobs which it gives to tions of investments. Socialism and the excesses of trade unions arise mainly from unemploytogethe ment. Early economists found the elasticity of modern business in the rise and fall one whe of prices and wages through demand and supply, on the assumption that labor was part-t being continuously employed. Karl Marx rejected the theory of demand and supply yers, and found the elasticity of capitalism in the "reserve army of the unemployed." orker. Trade unionism runs on the theory of most wage-earners that there is not enough work to go around, and the workman must "make work" by spreading it out, in order essan to take up the slack of unemployment.

turn &

as ta

In times past, security of investments has been important in order to get "capital." ate Strangely enough, it gets too much capital, and brings on a collapse. Today, it is more important to maintain security of jobs. As the industrial system grows, wageearners, without investments, become a larger part of the population. In England they are perhaps four-fifths; in America not yet one-half. England and Europe waited too long before starting their remedies for insecurity of jobs.

hich

bet

Th

It is twenty-five years since the Canton of St. Gall, in Switzerland, started the experiment of unemployment insurance. The experiment failed. Fifteen years ago it was tried again in Belgium, on a different plan. Denmark followed. Then England started with another plan, on a large scale, in 1912, and enlarged it in 1920. Italy, in 1920, copied England. The first American proposal, differing from the European plans, was that of Senator Huber, favorably reported and considered in the recent session of the Wisconsin State Senate, but finally abandoned on disagreement over details. The hearings and debates on the Huber bill, and the various revisions and amendments to the original bill, furnish a clue to the provisions needed to fit American conditions and opinions.

Insecurity of employment is not merely the result of war. It is inherent in the credit system. Credit cycles have recurred every 8 years, on an average, during the

from two million workmen to twelve million, the particular rules and regulations were renewed, with minor changes, thus indicating their practicability. A worker, under the British rules, is not entitled to compensation if he quits of his own accord or is discharged for inefficiency or misconduct. He is not entitled to compensation if the unemployment is caused by a strike or lockout, either in his own or related shops. And he is not denied compensation if he declines to accept a job where there is a strike. Otherwise he is required to accept a job offered to him through the public employment office, if competent and available, as determined finally by an umpire. He is required to apply at the office and to inquire for a job, or forfeit the compensation. The job offered must be substantially equivalent in compensation and conditions to the one which he had. Of course, a worker cannot literally be compelled to take a job, but if he refuses it, his compensation ceases.

At every employment office there is a board of referees, meeting once a week, representing employers and employees, to whom appeal may be made from the decision of the employment officer. Then, above all, there is an umpire for the entire system. During the first five years in England, with 2,000,000 workers insured, only 1,500 appeals were taken to this umpire, and his printed opinions reveal the operation of the law in all its details. This experience indicates that the rules applying to individual claims for compensation are practicable and these were adopted in the Huber bill.

The defects of the European systems are twofold. The state goes into the insurance business and subsidizes the trade unions. In St. Gall the workmen alone were required to contribute to the state insurance fund. Workmen began to leave the Canton, and the law was repealed. In Belgian cities, if any voluntary association of workmen makes contributions for the relief of their unemployed, the city reimburses the association to the extent of one-third or more of the amount paid out. Since the trade unions, with their out-of-work funds, are the only organizations to take advantage of the law, the city, in effect, subsidizes the unions. After this system, adopted in Denmark, had resulted in abuses, the revision of the law in 1920 provided that no longer should the unions decide whether an unemployed person was entitled to the state aid. A public official is now the umpire and decides between the workers, the union, and the state. When England followed in 1912, a third party, the employer, was required to contribute to the state fund, but the subsidizing of trade unions was continued.

into the unemploy

office takes the place

the safety expert.

Ten years ago, when t

employers were alarmed by the