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