three foremen and three workmen, to look after such minor details as cooperation and adjustment, safety and accidents, health, recreation and insurance, system, production and facilities, sanitation and housing, and any others necessary in the individual plant. Likewise, in order to avoid duplication of effort, the chief executive usually appoints an advisory board to represent him, which undertakes such investigations or research as the various committees may desire in order that they may have full information. The advisory board has no final power, but serves as a channel by which the management makes suggestions or secures information at any stage of the procedure. Before any important measures are inaugurated, the advice of this board is generally sought. In the larger establishments a personnel secretary is also appointed, whose duty it is to attend all meetings of all bodies for the purpose of offering guidance and taking minutes of the procedures. He passes all finished measures to the next higher body for further consideration and generally coordinates the work of the entire association.

Each group acts separately and expresses its own opinions, passing on its views to the other bodies for consideration. Anybody in any group may initiate a measure designed to benefit the whole organization. When measures affecting the whole originate in the upper body, they are referred to the lower for consideration; when the lower body has finished its deliberations, the measure is passed on to the next higher body for consideration and approval, until it finally reaches the chief executive, who may exercise the right of veto. These various groups concern themselves only with measures which affect the entire institution, and involve a change in administrative policy or the expenditure of money. All

other matters affecting only single groups are referred to the joint committees for action. Through this group action and discussion the wage-earners come to feel that they are a real part of the institution and that its success depends upon the way in which they do their work and the attitude they display toward this work. The wage-earner has concrete evidence of the fact that he is a participant not only in the success of his concern but in the failure of all parties in that concern when a dividend is not made. He has a definite channel of expression and he may make suggestions tending to improve not only his own condition, but that of his associates.

Wherever this plan has been introduced, it has been by the cordial assent of both employers and employees; without such approval the plan is not undertaken. Experience has shown that it vitally affects the attitude of the different classes of workingmen, foremen and others throughout an establishment. Each individual feels that if he has any idea likely to be of use to the organization as a whole, that idea will be given full consideration. Most of the establishments into which this plan has been introduced have regularly paid considerable dividends which represent the added increase in the value of the output due to awakened interest.

It has been urged against all such adjustments that they tend to raise many questions which from the nature of the case are impracticable and that, therefore, harm rather than benefit will result. It is always likely that, among groups of workmen, the glib talker rather than the reasonable thinker may, for a time at least, make himself prominent. This suggests the desirability of careful selection by the management of their own representatives. Foremen who have a knowledge of human nature, and who can meet with discretion and judgment

as well as with kindly fair-mindedness any type of employee will be a large factor in the success of any such plan; and the workers are likely in the course of time to learn who among themselves will really be their best representatives.

Suggestive as are some of these plans, we must not lose sight of the fact that large industry is extremely complicated, that new conditions will arise which none of these plans can meet, and that while all should be given fair consideration, no one should expect from any plan or any series of plans a complete solution of our industrial troubles.

IX

UNEMPLOYMENT

To live at all implies a continuous outgo of money, and to maintain a comfortable standard is incompatible with a capricious and uncertain income. The standard attained depends upon annual earnings rather than on weekly wages. Interruptions of income are likely to bring inconvenience if not distress in their train. Unemployment, therefore, from whatever cause, is the leading foe of that assured standard of living, which is the goal of every worker and should be the aim of a national labor policy.

Unemployment is a threefold problem. It affects conditions peculiar to the individual worker, conditions peculiar to a specific industry, and conditions governing business as a whole. An ideal state in which every worker can pursue his occupation without interruption, in which every industry offers equal opportunities for labor throughout the year, and in which from year to year the demand for labor is always uniform, belongs in the land of dreams. But in the land of reality much may be done to reduce the amount of unemployment and to mitigate its consequences. This is the practical issue confronting the industrial world.

At any given time, as all investigations of unemployment reveal, a very considerable proportion of those out of work are temporarily incapacitated through illness. A widely quoted estimate, based on the illness records of

approximately a million workers in various industries, indicates that each wage-earner in the United States loses on the average between eight and nine working days per year. Other studies have shown that illness occurs most frequently and causes greatest loss of time among the older workers, among workers in certain occupations, and among workers whose incomes are lowest. By whatever wage scale we choose to multiply this average loss of time per worker, the loss in wages-to say nothing of the cost of impaired efficiency-reaches a staggering total, literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Figures so vast lead us to a new appreciation of the economic value of public health work, particularly among those who constitute the nation's productive man power. The money that has been spent with such striking results in conquering yellow fever and in keeping out the bubonic plague, in lowering the sickness and death rate from typhoid fever, in reducing smallpox from a dreaded pestilence to a comparatively rare disease-to cite no more of the past achievements of public health administration and preventive medicine-is but a bagatelle in comparison with this loss. If, as we have a right to expect, similar results can be attained against pneumonia, tuberculosis, influenza, hookworm and some of the other important causes of disability and death, no price would be too high to pay for the immeasurably greater benefits to accrue from lessening the loss of working time and thus increasing efficiency. Possibly equally great results would come from checking the minor illnesses-colds, indigestion, sick headaches and the like. While we rejoice in the greater measure of human happiness brought by decrease in illness and in the preservation of human life, we should also recognize that it is good business. Any measure which improves the