where they are assured of more continuous employment, and in such cases the cost of training replacements runs into very high figures. Finally, in the long run, regularization increases the workers' income; it raises the wage level of industry on the logical grounds of increased gain from increased efficiency. Now a thought as to how we shall solve the problem. The cases that I have presented offer a line of thought and show how others have solved their problems, but they are merely a few instances. In the first place take the question of simplification of style, size, kind, color, or shape. The work of Mr. Hoover's Division of Simplified Practice under the leadership of Mr. Ray Hudson cannot be too strongly commended. This Division is directly aiding the worker to attain regular employment through its scientific program of simplification and the determination of the waste resulting from failure to carry on a program of simplification. There is the question of purchasing. We can stabilize our business by changing buying habits. The American Radiator Company has done it; the makers of B.V.D.'s, Hills Brothers, Sherwin Williams Paint Company, and many others have done it. As a matter of fact retail merchants are doing it during the Christmas holidays by starting their advertising campaigns early and urging the public to do their Christmas shopping early. They wish to change the buying habits of the public so that they will not have to crowd their stores with untrained, incompetent, and careless sales persons during a brief period of peak demand. Industries whose product is purely seasonal are struggling with the problem of adding to their line some product which fills the gap. They want to make something for winter consumption in the summer if they are already making something for summer consumption in the winter. Here is the overlapping problem of buying habit, as in the case of the B.V.D.'s: winter manufacture for summer consumption, where a change in buying habit enabled them to flatten their production curve and distribute nearly as much in the winter as in summer. Frequently a scientific analysis of the distribution problem discloses the fact that the leveling out of the production curve can only be brought about by adding to the line. Where such action is indicated an attempt is made to fill in slack periods by manufacturing a product which can be readily disposed of, even though there be only a normal profit or no profit at all on the fill-in. The argument that industry can afford to produce non-profitable lines in order to regularize employment is neither illogical nor without a strong following. Whenever this question of regularization is generally discussed, it is customary for someone to ask how anything can be done for those trades which are directly affected by winter conditions and the seasons. The engineer has exploded the notion that concrete pouring, bricklaying, steel construction work, carpentry, and other outside jobs are seriously affected by weather conditions. As a matter of fact, records show that in and around the latitude of New York there are just as many good days for outside work in the winter as in the summer. The problem is not one of the workmen being able to work; it is one of making it possible for them to work. It is one demanding a conscientious effort to change buying habits. The public must be sold on the idea that they can build their homes just as well in the winter as in the summer. The realtor must be sold on the idea that he can construct the apartment house or office building just as well in January as in July. The engineer must become a salesman to convince his superiors that he can build the bridge, factory, or powerhouse just as well in the winter as in the summer. The Railway Age of December 5, 1925, carried an article on winter work in Canada and Alaska, where the author, Mr. A. M. Bouillon, testifies that the work of bridge building, including the pouring of the concrete and all of the erection work, could be done just as well and just as profitably in winter as in summer. As a matter of fact his actual figures showed that there was a financial balance in favor of winter construction, and he argues for such work and calls for the cooperation of contractors and the general public in changing their ideas and policies about winter construction. Just a word now with regard to an immediate attack on the problem by an individual firm. Any firm which has not yet made a serious attempt to solve its problem can improve the situation within a reasonable time. It should give immediate consideration to budgeting, make a serious effort at scientific market analysis and sales predetermination, and simultaneously attack those problems within the plant which will lend direct aid to the program. Here are a few points of attack in the plant: more temporary transfers as helpouts where skill is not important; absolutely sound policies back of wage incentive plans which will encourage the worker to deliver maximum production of the right quality; the creation of utility workers competent to perform satisfactorily on many jobs requiring skill, to be used as helpouts where formerly temporary operators were employed; greater care in the selection of workers and in determining their physical fitness for the job; the utilization of students from high schools and colleges where there is a summer peak of labor demand; the utilization of farmers, workers in canning plants, and others of a like nature where there is a big demand for labor in winter; concentration of all layoffs to one period to be known as a vacation period, either with or without pay, as the circumstances may dictate. In Wisconsin an effort has been made to effect employment legislation through the medium of what is known as the Huber bill. In this bill it is planned to place the burden of unemployment responsibility upon the employer in the form of unemployment insurance. Many of us will have to be sold on this matter of legislative action, regardless of the experience of the various countries of Europe which have dealt with unemployment not by preventing but by compensating for it. It does not seem to be the typically American way of going after the evil. There is already too much in the way of legislation, and too little of engineering investigation with regard to industrial problems. We do not wish to see a return in this country to the employment of cheap foreign labor. We wish to substitute more efficient, skilled, highly paid, regularly employed men and women imbued with the American spirit and ideals. We believe that the American laborer and the American engineer or manager have at bottom the same hopes and aspirations; that one is no more interested nor less interested in solving industrial problems than the other; that there must always be leaders and followers. President William Green of the American Federation of Labor has frankly asked the managers of industry to lead the way toward this cooperation. Such cooperation is not only feasible, but essential, and it is not going to be made smoother or better by a group of lawyers or professional politicians getting together and passing laws forcing the various groups to function in a certain way. There should be a tendency away from creating laws regarding industrial problems, and there should be a tendency toward solving these problems from an engineering or research standpoint, and on a factual basis rather than as a result of self-interest, passion, emotion, or even pure altruism. Closely integrated with regularization problems are those legislative programs which are directed at solving some of the problems relating to the worker, particularly the woman in industry. All social workers should study, and no doubt most of them have carefully studied, the reports of the Women's Industrial Conference held in Washington last January. Note its high lights. The National Woman's Party cried for "equal opportunity" for women and for the elimination of labor laws that do not apply equally to men and women. Secretary Davis stressed the effect of industrial work on the health of women and its effect on future generations, and called for more adequate protective measures (legislation). Between these two were trade-union representatives desiring adequate protective legislation and equal opportunity. As a result of these divergent views a resolution was passed asking the Women's Bureau to "make a comprehensive investigation of all the special laws regulating the employment of women, to determine their effects"-certainly a most wise and judicious proceeding, an effort to ascertain the facts. If such action is defined by the problem of women in industry, is it not equally demanded by the problem of regularization of employment, affecting those of both sexes? Let us proceed slowly, carefully, logically, avoiding panaceas, legislative or otherwise, but promptly supporting legislative measures where analysis proves that such support is demanded by the circumstances. I earnestly recommend that every person interested in employment regularization purchase and read Feldman's book, The Regularization of Employment, a work of 437 pages published by Harper & Brothers of New York. It is an encyclopedia of inspiration, as well as information, invaluable to anyone who sincerely desires to cooperate in attacking irregular employment. Your group has a deep interest in this problem. You should be missionaries of hope and promise, and at the same time you should be critical of the failure of industry and business and government to recognize it as one of the great problems confronting the American people. It is a problem that calls for an immediate and sustained general attack, and the worker has a right to, and sooner or later will, demand that it be a direct responsibility of management to find a solution. We do not want this solution to be the result of lawmaking, of coercion; it should be by willing voluntary effort of industrial leaders, social workers, and engineers. For once let us lead the way to the attainment of an ideal because it is right. Consider your own relations to this problem, the thousands of you who are directly affected by any approach at solution. Suppose that every wage-earner, capable of working and willing to work, could count with some degree of accuracy on a definite income per annum, would not the problem of the social worker be completely changed? Instead of the many phases of investigation, instruction, and relief now involved, more time could be devoted to the purely educational aspects of social work, such as family budgets, higher education for the children, organized saving, and such other phases of activity as are demanded by the changed conditions. Furthermore, you will then be dealing with people of higher intelligence, men and women interested through savings in manufacturing establishments as stock- and bondholders. The picture can be painted vividly, each of you lavishly applying whatever colors you may wish and in such manner as you elect, and you will still fall short of the reality. Our concepts of the possibilities are necessarily limited and stifled by our experiences of the past, which prevent us from realizing all of the changes that can be brought about in the social fabric by substituting that sense of faith and confidence and hope which accompanies security of employment for the fear and worry which must of necessity be the companions of insecurity. I challenge you to think of any problem confronting industry the solution of which would give greater satisfaction to the individuals cooperating in its solution, greater economic returns, more real comfort and relief to the millions of workers in this country, than this. It is fascinating in its possibilities; it appeals to all of our instincts to do something for others, it brings together organized and unorganized labor, management, and invested capital in a bond of common understanding, motivated by the same idealism, cooperating to accomplish the same ends, and all working unselfishly, but with a certainty of direct return in more happy workers and a tremendous saving in dollars to industry and to the entire country. Why can we not organize for concerted action? Everywhere the subject is being talked about, written about, performed. Will the leaders in social engineering, those earnest, unselfish men and women here present or represented in spirit, further our efforts, and by their active asistance help us to inaugurate and sustain a nation-wide attack on irregular employment? VI. NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY LIFE WHAT ZONING IS DOING TO IMPROVE Edward T. Hartman, State Consultant on Housing and Planning, There have been three stages in our development of laws in relation to buildings. First we had building laws, which had to do with strength of materials and with fire protection for property. Our efforts in the latter respect have amounted to little. Then we had housing laws, having to do with lighting, ventilation, and sanitation. These laws amounted to little. They have decreased building and improvements, increased costs, and left the slum conditions, with ever increasing congestion, worse than they ever were. Then we developed zoning, which districts buildings according to use and, when properly developed, regulates bulk—that is, height and area-for the provision of light and ventilation and for the prevention of congestion. All these features are beginning to function; they are functioning far enough to show what is possible; but they need a much wider application. When applied to residential areas of considerable size values are stabilized, speculation is stopped, and people, with some assurance of protection, begin to build homes for themselves. Zoning is doing more to lay a foundation for improved housing conditions than anything we ever have developed. Housing laws aimed at improving tenement living, but failed; they considered almost not at all the homes of the people, as distinguished from tenements. Housing laws set minimum sizes to rooms, to windows, to yards, and courts so far below the prevailing standard and the essential that these minimum provisions were at once adopted by practically all builders, surely by all speculative builders, to the infinite injury of the people. The "Model Housing law," so called, sets 90 square feet for a minimum size of rooms, with 7 feet as a minimum width, explaining that "7 feet is little enough." It is. The New York law sets 70 square feet as the minimum size of rooms, and that is the size of thousands of them. The Model law sets 4 feet as a minimum width for a side yard for a one-story building, with an increase of one foot in width for each story of increase in height, and above four stories a 2-foot increase for each story of height. The same law sets 6 feet for the minimum dimension of a court for a one-story building, with the same increases as in the case of side yards. It should be noted that the apparently generous pro |