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 Workmen began to leave the Canton, and the law was repealed.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.

These policies go on the prevented, and hence the phi The Huber bill abandons the l

successfully an insurance scheme,
bility solely upon the employers, or
contributions from the state or from e
company is created for the prevention and
to pay unemploym
required to insure

into the unemploy
office takes the place
the safety expert.

Ten years ago, when

employers were alarmed by the

the insurance company to pay $22,000 where it had been paying $5,000, on a of employer's liability. The calculation was probably correct on the firm's recor accidents. But they changed their claim agent into a safety expert, made their fa "fool proof," and at the end of the first year their accident liability was only $5 instead of $22,000. They had reduced the accident burden go per cent. It is an how much business men can accomplish if they have sufficient inducement. A present time, through their great National Safety Councils, through their state and safety councils, through their shop safety councils and safety engineers, they are di more to prevent accidents than the state, the philanthropists, the employees, unions, had even imagined was possible. They even operate safety campaig the streets and in the schools, indirectly reducing accidents in the shops. Aco.. to statistics, the employer probably was never legally responsible for more the third of the accidents. The "hazard of the industry" and the carelessness workers and fellow-workers, caused the other two-thirds. Yet the employer made responsible for all accidents. The secret is that he knows how to money by educating the public as well as his own employees and his fellow ployers, on the subject of "safety first."

Public business will generally be less efficient than private business, if for no reason than salaries. In Wisconsin, a dozen or more of the safety experts, employ by the state industrial commission to start the safety movement, have been th over by the National Safety Council, by the state employer's mutual insunt company, and by individual employers, at salaries two to five times the amou paid by the state. At the hearings on the Huber bill a leading employer, while ope ing the bill, showed how it would work in his case. He figured that the proposed would cost his firm $50,000 a year. If it should go into effect he would not trust state employment officers he would hire his own employment manager to find j for his men when he laid them off.

This is the business way of looking at it. The state will pay low salaries to responsible for spending $20,000,000 a year, because the people cannot meas inefficiency, and the legislature can save the state from bankruptcy out of the pocke of the taxpayers. But the business man, who must measure inefficiency and ba ruptcy in dollars and cents, will pay an employment manager two to five times t state salaries in order to save $50,000 a year.

Incidentally, efficient employment management, as it has come to be know during the past ten years, may be expected to make money for the employers, under unemployment compensation law, if organized like their safety work. The labo turnover, the dovetailing of jobs, the training of employees for different jobs, the selection, promotion, and transfer of employees, the spreading out of the overhead expense, the encouragement of home ownership, the cultivation of willingness, improved morale of steady workers, all belong to this new profession of the "industrial engineer." The saving effected by the efficiency of this new profession may expected to exceed the cost of the unemployment compensation which makes it necessary and opens up a wider field for it.

This is the answer also, in part, to the objection that one state cannot pioneer the way, on account of interstate competition. Such objections did not eventually hold back accident compensation laws. The increased efficiency in avoiding accidents may be repeated in avoiding unemployment. But this objection has validity, and

the

be

1

vas

there it had beeɔe met in full only by introducing the system gradually. Certain transitional probably ures are required. A preventive measure cannot prevent a condition already gent into a saying. Hence a revision of the Huber bill provided that the law should not go into ar their accident until a finding should be made by the Industrial Commission that business cident burdenditions are improving and workmen are being re-employed in reasonable numbers. hey have sun is the time when companies begin to set aside their reserve funds for investors ty Councils, they may also set them aside for unemployment. Then they may begin to pay their ils and safety geniums to the mutual insurance company.

ployer individually, but to require it by legislation is a needless burden on employers. These differences, in the long run, must be settled by good judgment as to the future of the state and nation, and by an understanding of the causes of labor unrest. If the labor problem is a serious problem ahead, it is because it gets its bitterness from the inability of business to safeguard the security of employment. American states, with the approval of most employers, have removed from the struggle of capital and labor the bitterness of uncompensated accidents. Labor spokesmen formerly could, with justice, stir up hatred of employers with the accusation of profits taken out of flesh and blood. No longer do we hear that indictment. But we do hear that capital gets its profits out of the reserve army of the unemployed and there is no effective reply. For the sake of capitalism and even of a civilization which, like capitalism, depends on confidence, capitalists should look ahead and assume legal responsibility for security of jobs parallel to their legal responsibility for security of investments.

B. PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT OFFICES IN RELATION TO

UNEMPLOYMENT

Professor F. S. Deibler, Chairman, General Advisory Board, Illinois Free Employment Offices, Chicago

Unemployment is the most serious industrial risk that comes to the man or woman who is working for wages. The burdens resulting from unemployment fall not alone upon the individual worker, but are borne also by his family. The worker is helpless at such times as there is little that he can do to avert the effects which such a period brings. In other words, the causes for unemployment are entirely beyond the control of the worker. He can do nothing but seek work. The by-products of long-continued unemployment are discontent or degeneration, both of which are socially bad. The importance of these by-products is the cause of the general public interest in the problem. When the stability of our social order is threatened public opinion becomes aroused and constructive measures can be more easily developed and put into effect as the result of the general discussion and the awa realization as to the importance of the problem.

nces in the bales

In laying plans to cope with unemployment the causes should receive fir sideration. Previous studies have shown that unemployment may be (a) due to maladjustment of the local supply and demand for labor; (b) seasonal, the irregularity in industry; (c) national, due to serious between production and consumption. Over-invest rapid change in investment, or even a marked chans for commodities, as is being witnessed at present: consumption to one of peace consumption, may s duction and consumption as to cause widespread un

When unemployment is local the public employ agencies in adjusting the supply of labor to the existin the employment office at this point is to furnish informatio of work to persons seeking employment. What is needed is a better organization of the labor market. I need not arg extension and general improvement of public employment ex

lar lines, or tu of the demand beriod of war ium of pro

of