Part 7 (2/2)

Taking therefore the official figures as representing the minimum of constant unemployment, 16 per cent of 7,000,000 is 1,120,000, and as every factory hand has on an average four persons dependent upon him, this means a total population of 4,480,000, or roughly, four millions and a half permanently in want in the United States owing to this unemployment which orthodox economists recognize as a necessary result of the compet.i.tive system.

But the public takes no account of the fact that our industrial system regularly reduces a population of 4,500,000 to want. The public only takes account of the extraordinary unemployment which occasions disorder and riot in times of panic and industrial depression. Panics and industrial depressions must not be confounded. We have seen that industrial depressions are the inevitable result of what Mr. Beveridge calls ”cyclical fluctuations” and recur with abominable regularity.

Quite independent, however, of these regularly recurring industrial depressions due to the working of the compet.i.tive system, there are financial crises or panics due to similar perturbations in our money market. Although they differ in many respects from industrial depressions, nevertheless they have in common with them the inevitable result of producing unemployment on a large scale. The panic of 1907 began as a purely financial crisis, but promptly became a lengthy period of industrial depression. It is not necessary at this point to discuss the relation between these two. But it is important that mere scarcity of money in the panic of 1907 produced unemployment more suddenly and in larger proportions than any other panics that have preceded it.

Not only private enterprises such as railroads, but public bodies such as munic.i.p.alities, being no longer able to borrow money, had not only to abandon work already voted, but to put a sudden stop to work already undertaken. Laborers were dismissed in batches of five thousand at a time, and every manufacturing and railroad plant was driven by the impossibility of borrowing money to cutting down expenses with a view to increasing the efficiency of the plant. Thus the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it had so increased the efficiency of its plant that it was able to dismiss 30,000 men during the year; the New York Central during 1907 dismissed ten per cent of the staff upon its main line alone; seventy-six railroads, operating over 172,000 miles of railroad, report an economy of nearly $100,000,000, most of which const.i.tuted an economy in wages,[45] and Senator Guggenheim, in an interview published in the _Wall Street Journal_,[46] said:

”For the first time in many years the employer is getting from his men the 100 per cent in efficiency for which he pays. It is a safe a.s.sertion that prior to the panic the efficiency of labor was no higher than 75 per cent, perhaps not even that.”

Special attention is directed to the foregoing because unemployment is ceasing to be a merely accidental and periodic phenomenon and is a.s.suming not only larger, but more permanent proportions. In other words, the 30,000 men dismissed by the Pennsylvania Railroad were not dismissed because of a temporary cessation of traffic. They were dismissed because the Pennsylvania Railroad has succeeded in so raising the efficiency of their system that they can permanently run their lines with 30,000 less employees than they could before.

Let us endeavor to form some idea of the unemployment during the last two years. The only State that regularly publishes official reports on this subject is New York. The State of New York derives its information from such trade unions as report to it; and from these reports it seems that during 1908, the average unemployment has been about one-third.

As has been intimated, an average of one-third of organized labor reported by trade unions, means a very much larger proportion of unorganized labor. It is true that Mr. Beveridge disputes this in one pa.s.sage,[47] but he himself furnishes the evidence of its truth in several others; as for example, where he says that ”in practice, therefore, it is found that acute recurrent distress at times of seasonal depression is confined to the unskilled occupations”;[48] and again, he points out how the lack of intelligence of unorganized and semi-skilled and unskilled workmen makes it impossible for them to take account of the fluctuations that produce unemployment. ”The measure of their failure,” he says, ”is to be found in those periods of clamant distress which evoke Mansion House Relief Funds.”[49]

In Chapter V, again, he points out the chronic distress of unskilled men and that unemployment is largely due to lack of organization. It stands to reason that whereas a factory owner thinks twice before dismissing a skilled workman he will not hesitate to dismiss an unskilled workman whom he can replace at any time.[50]

However much authorities may differ on this in Europe, there can be no question about it in America. It was impossible to read the daily papers in October, 1907, without being satisfied that the first men to suffer were the unorganized and unskilled. Hardly a day pa.s.sed for weeks without papers announcing the discharge of workingmen in batches of thousands at a time. It was only later that factories shut down, and then for the most part, a day or so in the week. Unfortunately, because the unskilled workingman is unorganized, it is impossible to get any information regarding the extent of unemployment in their ranks; but it can be stated without fear of contradiction, that the percentage of unemployment is much larger in the ranks of the unorganized than in those of trade unions.

The one-third, therefore, as shown by the New York Labor reports, is below the mark, I will not undertake to say how much. In endeavoring to make an estimate as to the extent of unemployment throughout the entire Union, we must remember that the percentage of employment in New York is likely to be larger than in purely agricultural States. On the other hand, nowhere is the percentage of unemployment greater than in the States devoted to mining. The difficulty under which we find ourselves, therefore, in giving the exact figure of the extent of unemployment, makes it wise not to increase the one-third reported by trade unions in New York in consequence of the certainty that this proportion was far larger in unorganized labor; and on the other hand, not to decrease it out of the consideration that there were some States in which the percentage would not be as much as in the State of New York. Under these circ.u.mstances it may be a.s.sumed that the percentage reported by the trade unions to the Labor Department fairly represents the average unemployment throughout the whole United States of America. Taking the census figures of over 7,000,000 as that of the workingmen in the country, one-third of 7,000,000 is 2,333,333; add to this the number of persons dependent on these workingmen; four to each, 9,333,333; add this to the first figure and we get a population of 11,666,666 which for two years has been on the edge of starvation, and saved from it only through acc.u.mulated earnings, help from trade unions and charity. As the unskilled workingman can hardly ever save money owing to the low rate of his wages, and as he is not organized and never receives benefits from a union, it may be said that the large majority of these have been living for two years on the charity of their neighbors.

It is probable, too, that the trade union member has been reduced to depending upon charity; for the last report on savings banks shows that $25,000,000 have been withdrawn during the last year, and their presidents, when interviewed, recognized that this diminution was caused by the withdrawal of funds by the unemployed.

It was also due to the withdrawal of funds by the trade unions. In October, 1907, many trade unions had large sums acc.u.mulated which have been applied during the year to the support of the unemployed. The Union of Pressmen had $30,000 last October, all of which has gone to support the unemployed during the year, and this union has suffered comparatively little, only 20 per cent being now idle. This 20 per cent is supported by a.s.sessments on those who are at work.

As regards remedies for unemployment, Mr. Beveridge says that ”no cure for industrial fluctuation can be hoped for; the aim must be palliation.” And he dwells at great length upon the palliative measures to which Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and to a less extent, France, have recourse; employment bureaus, insurance against unemployment, and farm colonies, to which last he refers only incidentally, pointing out that Hollesley Bay had proved for the most part ineffectual.[51] These palliatives have, however, rendered comparatively small service. In Germany, where they have all been applied, unemployment during 1908 reached the rioting stage, at which it becomes dangerous and commands the attention of our economists, as in England. The palliative, to which Mr. Beveridge only incidentally refers, is, to my mind, calculated not only to diminish the evil immediately, but to serve as an important bridge over which the unemployed and unemployables may pa.s.s into the Promised Land. The farm colony, however, belongs to the constructive chapter at the end of the book.

Another necessary consequence of the compet.i.tive system is a form of unemployment which, because of its importance, deserves consideration by itself--Prost.i.tution.

-- 3. PROSt.i.tUTION

Prost.i.tution is not an easy or agreeable subject to treat; it will be disposed of, therefore, in the fewest words possible. The treatment of it will be summary, not because the subject is unimportant, but because it is abominable. And if it is true that Socialism would put an end to it, this alone, for those who can comprehend the horrors thereof, ought to justify Socialism whatever be the sacrifice necessary to the realization of it. If our present compet.i.tive system is responsible for the evil to both s.e.xes that results from prost.i.tution, then the maintenance of this system is, so far as every one of us by indifference tolerates it, nothing less than crime.

We must begin by making ourselves clear as to what prost.i.tution is.

Mere promiscuity of s.e.xual relation does not const.i.tute prost.i.tution, for many a woman is unfaithful to her husband many times without losing social consideration, provided only she conduct herself with sufficient discretion to avoid scandal.

Nor does intercourse for money const.i.tute prost.i.tution; for then prost.i.tution would include all those who marry for money. The real definition of a prost.i.tute is a woman who has intercourse both promiscuously and for a money reward, promiscuity and gain must be united.

Now it will later be made clear that in a Socialist state because every woman would be furnished an opportunity to work, none would be driven to prost.i.tution.

Prost.i.tution is generally the direct result of the disgrace put upon a woman by loss of virtue. She is turned out of her home and her legitimate employment. She has then but one recourse. It is sometimes due to lack of employment; sometimes to the greater facility prost.i.tution affords for making a livelihood with the least labor. In all these cases the _primum mobile_ is the making of a livelihood. As Socialism would remove this _primum mobile_, would a.s.sure a livelihood to every woman upon the single condition of her performing her allotted work--there would be no motive for prost.i.tution. If she refused to perform her allotted task she would become a pauper--but a prost.i.tute never; for a Socialist state, as will be later explained, would segregate paupers in farm colonies, where they would be compelled to support themselves, and would not leave them to demoralize their neighbors by profligacy and prost.i.tution.

It may be objected that society keeps itself pure by casting out women of loose character, and that an innocent girl should not be called upon to work in a factory side by side with one who will deprave her if she can. An exhaustive answer to this would involve a study of the special conditions of each State, the laws of each State, the mental att.i.tude of the people, their tolerance of immorality or their intolerance of it. It is a problem common to every society. This exhaustive study it is not the province of this book to undertake; the subject must be disposed of, therefore, by the following general considerations:

In the society of the wealthy to-day we are confronted by the same problem as would be presented in a cooperative commonwealth in which prost.i.tution would be rendered impossible by state employment regardless of morality. In other words, wealth does for the wealthy cla.s.s what Socialism would do for the unwealthy; it makes prost.i.tution improbable if not impossible. And the wealthy manage to solve the problem of promiscuity--every wealthy society for itself in its own way.

In one country the woman who outrages morality is socially ostracized; in another she is tolerated; in one country divorces are not only lawful, but fas.h.i.+onable; in others the church forbids divorce but tolerates the complaisant husband. _All these are problems of s.e.x which Socialism does not undertake to solve._ Later on the scientific and ethical aspects of Socialism will, I hope, lead to the conclusion that Socialism will so raise our ethical standards and habits of mind that s.e.xual irregularities will tend to diminish. Prost.i.tution, however, is not a s.e.x, but an economic problem. A woman does not receive money payment except for economic reasons. If the economic pressure is removed she may be licentious, but she will not be a prost.i.tute. Chast.i.ty ought to be a purely moral or social question, not an economic one. The compet.i.tive system makes it economic, and of all the crimes imputable to the compet.i.tive system, this is the greatest, for it directly perverts not only the human body, but the human soul. Of course, unemployment, in degenerating the body, ultimately degenerates the soul also, but the latter generation is more or less remote; the public conscience may be forgiven for not having discovered or taken account of it. But that we should see women daily compelled by hunger to sell soul as well as body and should then shut against them the door of our homes and our hearts, is a crime not only against them, but against ourselves. We are hardening our hearts as well as theirs. We are forcing our minds to that obliquity which sees in Socialism only ”p.o.r.nographic literature” and ”p.o.r.nographic propaganda” and charges the men who sacrifice their lives to the putting an end to the conditions that produce prost.i.tution with ”criminal nonsense” and ”grave mental or moral shortcoming.”[52]

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