METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY year with 10 per cent. less equipment. Labor turnover from all causes, avoidable and unavoidable, has decreased and is now below 1 per cent. per month. Turnover of materials and supplies has increased greatly. Purchases are brought in approximately at the rate they are consumed with a fair margin of safety. The cost of mechanical supplies is only 40 per cent. as high as it was. Other cost items have been reduced 50 per cent., 35 per cent., 25 per cent. and 15 per cent. EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE As we have already suggested, one of the most important gains to be realized through stabilization is the steadying of employment. Seasonal “hiring and firing” is an expensive process. It not only involves inflated training expense but also generates dissatisfaction, unrest and turnover among the employees, and tends to reduce efficiency when the work on hand begins to run low. Employers whose accounting and budgeting systems enable them to calculate with some accuracy the cost of seasonal instability, reckon this last item of expense one of the most serious. Some of them accordingly have sought to reduce these half-hidden items of expense by adopting a minimum employ- ment guarantee. PROCTER and GAMBLE, the soap manu- facturers, are able, through stabilization measures, to guarantee at least forty-eight weeks of work each year to each of their employees. The Delaware and Hudson Railroad makes a somewhat similar guarantee to those of its employees with two or more years of continuous service who carry at least two kinds of contributory group insurance, life, health and accident or accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Benefits are paid for a period of six weeks, or less if other employment is found. They apply only to those dismissed from service. A paper company has an agreement with its workers to pay full wages during unemployment for a period of four weeks 19