How Many Jobless?

How many workmen were jobless throughout the land last week not even the President of the U.S. knew. Government officials made guesses on unemployment, colored more by partisan politics than by positive facts. Senators flayed the Department of Labor for its paltry system of gathering labor statistics. The City of Milwaukee opened soup kitchens. Bread lines stretched out in Brooklyn. Manhattan's Bowery swarmed with sullen idle men. Communists staged demonstrations throughout the U.S. as well as abroad (see p. 21). Though these things combined to make the Hoover Administration acutely unemployment-conscious, none of them answered the question: how many jobless?

There could be no factual answer to that question because the U.S. Labor Department makes no nationwide survey of employment conditions. It gathers a few sample figures from which it estimates on a percentage system whether employment is rising or falling. Some 35,000 business concerns, employing less than five million workers, are regularly queried. Employment by these concerns during 1926 is set at 100%, against which, on a monthly basis, fluctuations are estimated. Three serious complaints against the accuracy of the Labor Department figures: 1) They cover only 12 1/2% of the employment field; 2) No account is taken of the unknown number of idle workers during 1926 when the index was set; 3) If a worker is employed only one out of six days per week, he is reported as if he had a full-time job.

Last week Secretary of Labor James John Davis had to bear the full brunt of popular feeling over unemployment. Pressed for figures he first estimated that some 3,000,000 are now jobless: "I admit .there is distressing unemployment. . . . Something like 46,000,000 individuals are earning a living in the country and certainly 43,000,000 of them are at work." Then he gave his figures a political twist: "The workers of the country need the passage of the Tariff Act to remove uncertainty. . . . Delays in tariff legislation are more responsible today for creating unemployment than any other factor. Push the building program, pass the Tariff Bill and our worker will find employment."

When the stockmarket crashed last year President Hoover looked ahead to just such an unemployment crisis as befell the country. He tried to cushion its full impact by inducing Big Business to expand their construction activities, to keep as many workers as possible busy. Last week he conferred long with Secretary of Labor Davis, Secretary of Commerce Lament, then spoke out for the first time on the results of his economic endeavors:

"Unemployment amounting to distress is concentrated in twelve states.* The authorities in the remaining 36 states indicate only normal seasonal unemployment.

"The low point of business and unemployment was the latter part of December and early January. Since that time employment has been slowly increasing.

"The amount of unemployment is, in proportion to the number of workers, considerably less than one-half (probably only one-third) of that which resulted from the crashes of 1907-08, and 1920-22.

"All the evidences indicate that the worst effects of the crash upon employment will have passed during the next 60 days."

Secretary Davis's "guess" of 3,000,000 jobless did not jibe well with White House optimism. Therefore, in a joint statement with Secretary Lament, Mr. Davis revised his figures and "guessed" again that current unemployment did not exceed that of last year at this time by more than 1,250,000.

The Senate, not to miss a good political trick itself, began hearings on bills offered by New York's Senator Wagner to create a flexible $50,000,000 public building fund, to establish a large Federal employment service and, most important, to set up fact-finding machinery for the Labor Department to answer the question: how many jobless?

* President Hoover did not name them. Best Guesses: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland, North Carolina.

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