WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE Translated into human terms, the foregoing economic loss means tragic waste of energy and life. The evils of unemployment, of industrial accidents and preventable diseases, resulting from untoward industrial conditions, are but further indications of the manner in which modern industry fails properly to utilize its wealth of human resources. Unemployment.- Unemployment of greater or less degree, due to the anarchy of present-day industry, to underconsumption, to failure of business concerns, to fluctuations of seasonal industry, to the installation of new inventions and administrative methods, to artificial stimulation of immigration, to industrial disputes, to the lack of adequate labor exchanges and to other causes, has been a persistent concomitant of the capitalist system.33 66 33 Prior to the war, numerous attempts were made to estimate the amount of unemployment in the United States. Dr. I. M. Rubinow, in summarizing the unemployment survey connected with the 1900 census, declared that, of the total number gainfully employed at that time (29,000,000), on an average of 2,000,000 had been idle throughout the year." (Rubinow, Social Insurance, p. 445.) The Federal Immigration Commission in 1909 estimated that nearly onehalf of the workers (46.8 per cent.) were out of a job two months during the year, and that, on the average, the male worker lost approximately three months' time each year. (See Lauck and Sydenstricker, Conditions of Labor in American Industries, pp. 76–78.) After a survey of practically all the data available, Lauck and Sydenstricker maintained, in 1916, that the average wage-earner, employed in the principal manufacturing and mining industries which operate throughout the normal year, loses from 10 per cent. to 20 per cent. of his possible working time. During periods of depression, conditions are far more serious. In February, 1915, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the total number of unemployed in New York City alone approximated 338,000. Two months later the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company placed the number of jobless men in this city at 420,000. (Lauck, etc., op. cit., p. 102.) During the war, While labor exchanges and other social agencies are seeking to ameliorate this problem, certain modern developments are tending to make it more acute. One is the driving of workers from staple industries to those in which the demand is more irregular, and employment, therefore, more precarious.34 Another development is the establishment of industries depending on casual workers and women and children who are willing to work for less than a subsistence wage. 35 Causes of Unemployment. It is frequently urged that unemployment is due largely to laziness, not to inability to obtain work. The fallacy of such a statement, however, has been demonstrated in many investigations. According to trade union data secured during the fiveyear period, 1907 to 1911 inclusive, lack of work was the cause at the end of March each year, in from 66.8 per cent. to 89.6 per cent. of the cases. 36 Unemployment prevents efficient production. It generally means for the unemployed and his family a subnormal standard of living, untold anxiety, bitter discouragement, depleted efficiency and consequent inability to work regularly. It frequently leads to pauperism and to the tragic undermining of the best in the worker's character. While unemployment can undoubtedly be alleviated there was little unemployment. With the coming of peace, however, the problem is again returning. The U. S. Employment Service on June 19, 1919, reported 241,046 unemployed in 100 cities, according to advices received by them. A further social waste, indirectly connected with unemployment, is the enormous labor turnover in modern industry. (See Problem of Labor Turnover, by Paul H. Douglas, American Economic Review, June, 1918, pp. 306-16.) 34 Hobson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, p. 334. 35 Lauck, op. cit., p. 76. 36 Parmalee, Poverty and Social Progress, p. 117. See also Bulletin of the Dept. of Labor, No. 109 (1912), pp. 31–2. under the system of private ownership, the lack of any scientific control over production and distribution, the small purchasing power of the mass of workers, and the fact that individual capitalists find it to their economic interests to maintain a reserve army of the unemployed, make a complete solution of this problem under capitalism extremely difficult if not impossible. Industrial Accidents. A further waste, closely related to the profit system, is found in the thousands of unnecessary accidents occurring each year in the dangerous battle of industry. Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, the statistician of the Prudential Life Insurance Company, conservatively estimated that 25,000 American wageearners were killed in our industries in 1913, and that nearly three quarters of a million (700,000) were disabled for a period of more than four weeks.37 On the railroads, the year 1916 yielded no less than 9,364 deaths and 180,375 injuries. Of the deaths, a minority (2,687); of the accidents, a large majority (160,663), occurred among the railroad workers.38 While the carelessness of employees and the unpreventable hazards of industry are undoubtedly responsible for many accidents, the failure of the employer, in his race for profits, to place proper safeguards around the worker,39 the greatly increased speed of modern machinery and the fatigue of the worker at the fag end of a long day are responsible for large numbers.40 Stricter factory regulations, workmen's compensation. 37 Hoffman, Industrial Accident Statistics, p. 44. 38 Statistical Abstract, 1916, p. 306. 39 In 1906, it was stated that, in Illinois, 100 men were killed or crippled in the factories of the state by the setscrew, while for thirty-five cents this danger device could have been recast into a safety-device. (Brandeis, Business, a Profession, p. 59.) 40 Rubinow, Social Insurance, Ch. V. laws and other collectivist measures are forcing more adequate safeguards, but, hitherto, the profit system has placed immense obstacles in the way of adequate safeguards. The money loss of such accidents to industry is apparent. The attending tragedy of pain, of broken hopes, and actual physical want which these industrial mishaps bring into the lives of tens of thousands is not so apparent to the cataloguer of cold statistics, but is no less real. Disease. A further social and economic waste is appearing in the startling amount of sickness and death due to present conditions. Professor Irving Fisher recently estimated that 630,000 preventable or postponable deaths and 1,500,000 preventable cases of serious illness occurred in the United States every year." 41 While it would be absurd to attribute all these preventable cases of sickness and death to economic conditions, it is undoubtedly true that such sickness is primarily the direct result of unsanitary working conditions and the poverty of the masses, with its attendant "bad housing, inadequate diet, child labor, the employment of mothers in mills, factories and stores, the uncertainty of family income, inability to pay for proper medical attendance and care, alcoholism, the restriction of the natural desires for normal self-expression, discouragement and mental depression, physical deterioration, frequent and constant illhealth. . . . Even ignorance .. is а more intimate companion of poverty than of financial competence or of wealth.42 41 Fisher, Report on National Vitality, pp. 1, 119. Dr. B. S. Warren of the U. S. Public Health Services estimates (Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, p. 124), that each of the thirty odd million wage earners loses through sickness an average of 9 days a year. 42 Lauck and Sydenstricker, op. cit., Poverty and Disease. Overcrowding, low wages and sickness have always been boon companions. The Federal Children's Bureau recently discovered, in a survey of Johnstown, Pa., that infant mortality in families where the father earned less than $10 a week was three times as great as in those where the weekly income was $23 or more. 43 In 1913 the tuberculosis rate in the Washington Street district, New York City, where over half the families live in two rooms, was four times as great as the rate generally prevalent. 44 Bad shop conditions are a prolific cause of disease. Sickness due to phosphorus, lead, mercury and arsenic poisonings, to metals, dust, heat, cold, confined air, overcrowding, compressed air, excessive light, undue strain on particular sets of muscles, nerves and senses, play havoc with thousands. The International Association of Labor Legislation recently enumerated 53 classes of poisons and hundreds of branches of industry in which these poisons were ever present.45 "There is hardly any line of modern manufacture free from the dangers of industrial poisoning." 46 While model factories exist, they are in the minority.17 Conditions in such metal trades as the zinc industry are particularly bad. 48 So grave has been this problem that Dr. Hoffman concluded in 1908 that, by proper attention to factory conditions, an annual saving would have been effected of ap43 Ibid., 348. 44 Lauck, op. cit., p. 336. 45 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, Nos. 86 and 100. 46 Rubinow, Social Insurance, p. 212. 47 Second Report, N. Y. Factory Investigating Committee, 1913, Vol. II, p. 416. 48 U. S. Bureau of Mines, Technical Paper, 105 (1915), p. 832. |