54 UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 
factories in three American cities in 1928.%# The study showed that it is by no 
means easy to find work. Of those who were able to find employment, only 11.5 
per cent were able to find a job in less than a month’s time. Over 60 per cent, 
that is, nearly two-thirds, had been out of work for more than 3 months, and 
32 per cent, nearly one-third, were out for six months or more. Thirty-five 
persons, or 5 per cent, had been out for a year. 
Most of these wage earners had to support themselves and their families by 
drawing out their savings accounts during this long period of unemployment. 
Less than one-third (only 31 per cent) were able to find temporary employment 
of any sort. This meant serious privation and often permanently lowered living 
standards for their families. Children at school have to go to work at times like 
these; boarders must be taken in, often overcrowding the family; debts are run 
up at the grocer’s and other stores; and savings accounts, often put by through 
years of sacrifice in order to give the children a chance, are drawn out and the 
children never have the start in life that would enable them to make something 
of their abilities. The study shows that of the men who were able to find 
work, nearly half (48 per cent) had to take a lower salary, meaning a further re- 
duction in the standard of living, a further sacrifice for father and mother. 
and more lost opportunities for the children. 
The problem of adjustment, of learning new skills in new jobs is also well brought 
by this study. Less than one-tenth of those wage earners who were laid off were 
able to get back again to their old jobs. Only one-third of those who found 
work were able even to secure employment in the same industry. For most 
of them (54 per cent) the layoff meant a complete change of work so that old 
skills, learned often through years of training and experience, and bringing 
high pay, were useless and they had to begin all over again at the bottom and learn 
a new trade, at lower pay. Trained cutters with years of experience in the cloth- 
ing industries found work as attendants at gasoline stations, watchmen in 
warehouses, clerks in meat markets; a machinist was selling hosiery for a mail 
order house; a skilled lathe operator was running a mixer in a cement brick plant; 
a licensed engineer took work as a caretaker in a public park; a skilled welding 
machine operator became a farm hand. And so the story goes. 
For the older workers the problem of finding new work was far more difficult 
than the younger. Few of the men over 45 were able to find work and some of 
them were out for long periods. The price of our industrial progress is too often 
paid by the man over 45, who has reached just the age when his children are in 
their teens and his income counts most for their future. 
Two very diverse policies accompany mechanization of industry. The time of 
the employed worker has become of much greater value and every effort is made 
to increase his productivity. The displaced worker is as ruthlessly scrapped as 
an out-of-date machine—even with less concern, for every well-managed institu- 
tion has an amortization fund to provide against obsolete machines. 
Men who have given years of their lives to producing the products upon which 
the reputation of the industry rests, are discharged without any consideration for 
what they have invested in the industry. Neither industries nor society has 
worked out a plan for meeting either separate or joint indebtedness to workers 
who lose that society may gain. 
.A dismissal wage to help absorb the ‘shock’ is paid by some few industries, 
but this is not adequate to meet the problem of readjustment. Organized labor 
is spokesman for these victims of the progress of industrial technology. We urge 
the following proposals for meeting the needs of these workless individuals: 
LABOR’S PROGRAM 
Shorter daily and weekly work periods in order that more workers shall be 
employed and all shall have leisure to enjoy the products of industry. 
Higher incomes for wage earners in order that this vast potential market may 
be able through its purchases to stimulate industries to their full capacity. 
A system of Federal employment agencies for the workless so that they may 
have most efficient services in finding all possible work opportunities. 
A vocational guidance service connected with employment offices to help 
workers whose crafts are displaced by new production methods, to equip them- 
selves for positions under new industrial conditions. 
1 Study by Isador Lubin, Institute of Economics.