Unemployment in the United States

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1828236179

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-226169

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Unemployment in the United States

Place of publication:: Washington

Publisher:: United States, Government Printing Office

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: II, 193 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Statement of Thomas F. Cadwalader, representing the Sentinels of the Republic, Baltimore, MD.

Collection:: Economics Books

136 - UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES You can not appropriate say $250,000 to put up a post office somewhere, put up the walls when times are hard, and then if times improve, let the roof and the interior wait until times get hard again. You can not do things just in that way. But, to a certain extent, no doubt, public works could be pushed in times of relative scarcity of other occupation, to some benefit. But it is very doubtful whether even by the spending of millions that the Federal Government is able and expected to spend in this matter, you would be supplying more than a palliative. The conditions producing unemployment, as I say, have baffled economists and thinkers. It is partly attributable fo technological unemployment, to the increase in the use of labor-saving machinery, throwing people out of jobs. Others attribute it to the decline in foreign trade, which has afforded a market for our exportable surplus. That may be due to a variety of reasons. It has occurred to me lately that possibly the fact that the most thickly populated sections of the globe, China and India, are in a state of grave internal disorder, which undoubtedly reduces the purchasing power of millions upon millions of human beings: and must affect world markets and world conditions, has something to do with that. We can not undertake to cure any of those things by the enactment of such legislation as this, nor, I respectfully submit, would this plan of coordinating and doing more than coordinating, concentrating into one bureau in Washington the placement service of the United States, do it. I take it that is the real purpose of this bill. If that was a desirable step, from the economic point of view in solving this problem, I ask you to consider whether organized industry is not sufficiently integrated to-day in this country to have resulted in a substantial movement toward that end. It seems to me that the vast organizations in the field of the automotive industry, railroads, textiles, and all lines of employment, would have voluntarily established some sort of a central labor ex- change, if they thought or had any reason to suppose that that would result in giving more men employment. It certainly and manifestly is to the advantage of the manufacturing interests of this country to have as many men employed and able to purchase goods as possible. Therefore, I venture to say that neither Mr. Green nor Senator Wagner nor any of the other proponents of this bill, however sincerely they may favor doing what Mr. Green called making a gesture towards the solution of this grave and increasingly serious problem; however sincere they are in trying to show that their heart is in the right place—I believe them too intelligent to really believe that the enactment of this bill is really going to do any appreciable good. ” ~ Of the witnesses who talked to you yesterday, I was really most impressed by the lady, Miss Perkins of New York, who made a very illuminating talk, to my mind. She described how the labor exchange, or whatever it is called, of the New York State Labor Department; operates and how it helped men out of work in Troy or Schenectady to find a job in Buffalo, if there was one, and so forth. Her idea was that a national organization that would enable her to do more than that, to take up an unemployed man in Boston or Fall River and move him to New York State, would be very much of a gain. Well, there is no reason why that should not be done. oo ‘It seems to me that one of these companion measures introduced by the same Senator but I believe now before another committee

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