112 UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
of inquiries made by that body on whatever subject it addresses itsell
to, since its function is merely to endeavor to make studies of eco-
nomic matters, particularly of pressing questions of public interest,
and to make available the results of its conclusions and the facts which
it assembles. I note here that among the directors at large of this
board are such extremes of thought, if you please, as H. W. Laidler,
executive director of the League for Industrial Democracy; T. W.
Lamont, member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. I see here
Matthew Woll, vice president of the American Federation of Labor.
I see among the professors representing universities, Thomas S.
Adams, professor of political economy at Yale University, and well
known to this committee as an advisor in financial and taxation
matters; John R. Commons, professor of economics of the University
of Wisconsin; Edwin F. Gay, professor of economic history, Harvard
University; David Friday of the American Economic Association ;
M. C. Rorty, American Statistical Association; George E. Roberts,
American Bankers Association; Hugh F rayne, American Federation
of Labor, and so on. I merely mention these names as indicating the
character of men who are interested in the National Bureau of Eco-
nomic Research.
This study of income and purchasing power reaches a very inter-
esting conclusion pertinent to the situation which we confront to-day,
so far as we may expect the answer in whole or in part from private
acts and private sources, that the income of the people of the United
States has increased in the past six years substantially 60 per cent,
in terms not of the present day dollar but of the 1913 dollar, and that
means that it has increased so that there is an actual gain represented
for each individual inhabitant of the United States in purchasing
power during that period of $235 per person, or roughly speaking,
$1,450 per family of five, the usual unit of economic inquiry, and
that, moreover, seven-eighths of all that new income has gone to
those whose income is less than $5,000 per year. In other words,
that the proportion of the new income which has arisen out of our
multiplied capacity for the production of wealth has gone in ever-
increasing degree from the upper to the lower brackets of income.
In connection with the question that was raised this morning as to
the influence of technological employment upon the present situation,
I want to call your attention to Doctor King’s analysis of this situa.
tion just presented in May, 1930, to the American Academy of Political
and Social Science in Philadelphia, on the occasion of its annual meet-
ing, under the title of “The Effect of the New Industrial Revolution
upon Economic Welfare.” Referring to the anixety as to the effects
of technological improvement upon employment, he makes the fol-
lowing striking explanatory statement:
When the census of manufacturers for 1923 appeared, it as discovered that
the number of wage workers was lower than in 1919. The 1925 census of mann.
facturers showed another decline.
Those figures were presented to you this morning.
These shrinkages in factory employment conjured up a new spectre, technolo-
gical unemployment. The reality of its existence has been vouched for by labor
leaders, magazine writers, newspaper editors, several economists, and at least one
cabinet official. . Those believing in this manifestation describe its origin as
follows: Production has expanded at such a rapid rate that consumers’ demand
has been unable to overtake it, One very well known writer on economics tells
us that all would be well if it were not for the fact that individuals and COIDOTa-
