uncertainty retarded expansion-and naturally resulted in the curtailment of activities.

* * *

The tariff is another cause of business uncertainty.

It was taken out of the realms of economics where it rightfully belonged, and eagerly seized upon by Political Quack Doctors as a political issue to ride into office.

* * *

James J. Hill, Builder of the North West, declared that two years is required for business to properly adjust itself to the changes in the tariff.

Yet, during President Taft's term, a revision in the tariff was made, followed by another change under President Wilson. Now we have assurances still another change is contemplated, all of which contributes to the uncertainty and helps to keep the unemployment problem a real live issue from day to day.

* * *

Business cannot prosper without some degree of certainty for the future. Having this certainty, business will go forward; without this certainty, business is retarded.

Disturbing legislation, inquisitorial commissions, impossible labor demands, tight money markets, threatening war clouds-all these factors have contributed to bewilderment and uncertainty in business. The business man dared not move far because he did not know what new troubles would arise, so he sailed "close to the wind." Naturally, his business decreased; his output was curtailed. The employer began to find himself out of work. Next in order, he must lay off some of his employes because he has not sufficient work for them or himself. Hard times with its consequent distress followed.

While the employe loses dollars, the employer loses thousands. The unemployment problem becomes acute.

EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS.

ROM the point of view of the wage-earner seeking work, the year 1914 was the worst since the year following the financial panic of 1907. Every able-bodied man who wanted work was not always able to find it.

During the months of January and February, reports from all parts of the country showed that conditions were far worse than usual. The situation on the Pacific coast was accentuated by the presence of large bodies of homeless men who had pushed on hoping for work in the exposition.

In the middle states employment agencies were unable to fill the larger part of their applications and in many cases private charitable agencies were obliged to provide special relief work. In the eastern states the distress of the other sections was repeated.

New York City seems to have suffered most of all. An official at a conservative relief society estimated that there were 325,000 unemployed in the city alone, a statement that was challenged but not disproved. The Municiple Lodging House proved entirely insufficient for those applying for shelter, and the city was obliged to press into service two public recreation piers and a city steamboat to house the overflow.

Attempts at Self-Help.

Extremely effective in arousing the public to the magnitude of the problem were certain activities of the unemployed themselves in attempting to demonstrate their need. They held numberless parades and protest meetings and made a number of demands on municipalities for work. In Seattle. the "International Itinerant Workers' Union," organized a co-operative boarding house which they called the

Hotel de Gink. They obtained some food and fuel by working for it, and each member who found work helped toward the support of the rest. They also secured and carried through several contracts for clearing land. So successful was the plan that experiments were tried in several western cities and in Boston.

Church Raids.

The most spectacular feature of the year's unemployment was the so-called "raid on the churches" in New York City. About 500 of the more restless of the unemployed gathered nightly in the open square in the lower part of the city to discuss the situation. Among them originated the idea of appealing to the churches for food and shelter. Several churches responded to their appeal and entertained them and in these cases the men conducted themselves irreproachably.

Constructive Suggestions.

A wave of remedial effort swept over the country as locality after locality realized the seriousness of the situation. Much of this effort was put forth by private citizens and organizations whose interest was that of public spirited citizens rather than that of workingmen directly affected.

The city clubs of New York and Philadelphia prepared programmes for study and remedial work. Chambers of Commerce, notably that of Boston, gave attention to the problem. At the annual meeting of the Association of Manufacturers in May, the question of using the influence of the association in behalf of unemployment insurance was raised.

* * *

can Association for Labor Legislation in affiliation with the American section of the International Association on Unemployment. These related organizations arranged for the First National Conference on Unemployment which was held in New York on February 27 and 28. It was attended by nearly 300 delegates from 25 states and 59 cities, whose numbers included economists, staticians, employers, trade unionists, social workers and labor department officials. While there was a difference of opinion as to the unusual seriousness of the situation, there was agreement as to the need of attacking not only the increased unemployment of commercial crisis but also the large amount of involuntary idleness which is an ever-present menace to the industrial worker. Recognition of this latter fact and action against it by an organized body may be said to mark a new attitude in America toward the unemployment problem. The Second National Conference on Unemployment was held in Philadelphia, December 28 and 29,

1914.

Public Action.

Prompted in part by private constructive work, were the steps taken by municipal, state and federal governments. Municipal free employment bureaus were started in several cities, among them New York. In March also a bill passed the New York legislature establishing a very complete system of labor exchanges.

The state of Washington through an initiated measure, adopted at the election on November 3, prohibited the

ment.

T the crest of this wave came the first call in the United States for constructive remedial action on a large scale. The call came from the Ameri

agencies from applicants for work. This is the first law of its kind in America. Two bills providing for a national system of labor exchanges were introduced in Congress.

Summer Improvement.

With warmer weather, the problem as usual passed into a less acute stage and consequently dropped out of the foreground of public attention. The attempts of the Federal Department of Labor to acquaint the unemployed

with the need for harvest hands in the West was the most noteworthy effort of the early summer. Notices of the need were posted in several thousand post offices. The success of this attempt is now being discussed.

T

Effect of European War.

HE outbreak of the great European war rendered the situation once more acute. Among the groups most affected were stevedores, sailors and longshoremen, because of the check to foreign trade, and stenographers and clerical workers in the financial districts and in importing houses, a class rarely troubled by unemployment. Since new construction work was halted, workers in the steel, cement and lumber industries suffered greatly from unemployment. A number of municipalities made such efforts to cope with the situation as the opening of free employment bureaus and the starting of new work on roads and sewers. Portland, Oregon, formulated an especially comprehensive program for providing public work and work in clearing land during the coming win

ter.

The Problem And Its Solution.

The year's hard experience with this complex problem suggests certain general conclusions.

(1) A real unemployment problem exists in America today. While certain special causes have probably intensified it in 1914, it is really everpresent.

(2) This is the case largely because of the seasonal nature of many industries, which demand for larger num

bers of workers at one time than at another. In order to strike at the heart of the problem, business must be increasingly regularized.

(3) A complete and efficient system of public labor exchanges, accompanied of private employment agencies, is a by thorough government supervision prime necessity the better to fit together demands for work and for workers.

(4) An extension of industrial training and vocational guidance is needed to produce more capable and more adaptable workers.

(5) For those then, left without work, contingency is a necessity. some system of insurance against the

While these sugestions, just mentioned, will do much in settling the present unemployment question, nevertheless, something else is absolutely necessary to prevent the reoccurrence of this condition.

Mischievious and ill-advised legislation against business, must cease. The political "quack doctor" must be given "knock-out" drops and forevermore be prevented from doing harm. The Congress of the United States. must desist from harassing business. Questions of strictly economic character must not be made the political slogan of any political party.

The campaign of villification and misrepresentation carried on by the yellow press that has served to befog the minds of the average American citizen, must no longer be permitted to continue.

Business is necessary for the very existence of our people. Consequently it ought to be encouraged, not throttled.

Given a fair chance, unhampered by restrictive laws, passed by political failures, business will surely prosper and the unemployment question will no longer exist.

HE old woman was crouching over the remains of the fire, the few smouldering ashes of which she had raked together to conserve their redness, and spreading the palms of her yellow, wrinkled hands to get the little warmth that remained.

She was very old and very worn; her face was deeply channelled with the lines of hardship, privation, and sorrow, and about it her unwashed grey hair hung in thin lank wisps; her wrists and knuckles were swollen and distorted with rheumatism; her feet, which were encased in a pair of man's boots, were misshapen and almost useless; from her under-jaw, which moved continually like that of some ruminating animal, projected obliquely her only remaining tooth; her eyes were deeply sunken, and over them her heavy, grey eyebrows joined to form a scraggy arch. Her thin shoulders were covered with a piece of old sacking, which fulfilled the office of mantle, and she drew its ends together over her flat bosom with one hand while she held the other close to the dying fire. She would have been brutal but for the "tone of time" which softened the grey asperity of her face and made it almost beautiful.

The squalor and dreariness of the room wherein the old woman sat was accentuated by the feebls light of a primitive oil-lamp, which, having no chimney, was in constant danger of being blown out by the currents of air which came in through innumerable crevices, made evident otherwise

by the obviously futile attempts to stop them. Over the door was hung another piece of sacking, not yet sufficiently tattered to be utilized as clothing.

The furniture consisted of a small deal table, an old oak chest standing in a corner near the fireplace, a decrepit arm-chair stuffed with horsehair and become easy by reason of much use, some crockery on the mantlepiece made up of mutilated shepherds, an ultra-faithful dog, and sundry strange creatures either extinct or not yet reached by evolution. Hanging from a nail in the wall was a rudely fashioned wooden sword, evidently the sometime possession of a martially disposed child. The walls themselves were covered with a blue distemper and were decorated with almanacs lacking frames, some Scriptural texts, and the representation of a multi-colored Joseph seeking safety in flight.

On the table lay a handleless knife, a broken basin of cold potatoes, half an onion, and a crust of stale bread. Altogether it was the interior of a poverty-stricken hovel, which would have been but an indifferent dwellingplace for a dog.

For over thirty years, had the old woman lived in this place; here were her nuptials celebrated; here had her son been born; her husband had gone hence on his great journey; and she, hapless mortal, was here living out the remainder of her slow, inconsequent days. Loneliness and misery had dried up the milk of human kindness and hardened her soul.

Neighbors, she had none, for the cottage stood alone on a barren, windswept hill, shunned by the peasants. of the district and forsaken even by the sheep for its dreary and inhospitable aspect.

Many years before, during one of the rebellions which were constantly breaking out in that faction-ridden land, her only son, always a rascal, had enlisted under the Royal banner in order to escape being hanged for murder. Three times had he returned home, always drunk and always to demand money, and each time she had suffered robbery and insult at his hands.

Let it be truly told of her, poor, weary old woman, that she remembered not his transgressions, neither hardened her heart against him. Every hour that came with the oppression of its presence brought also with it some gracious thought of the child who had lain his head on her bosom and, secure in her arms, slept sweetly sweetly through the perils of infancy.

Over the fire she crouched, this old, worn woman, stretching her palsied hands to the dying embers, waiting and waiting for the return of her son.

At twelve o'clock, like a thief in the night, he came home-came in from the sweet serenity of the cool night air and stood ignobly in the presence of his mother. At the lifting of the latch she rose, still holding with one hand the ends of the sack, the other stretched forward in intense expectation. Seeing the one beloved object of her dreams she stood quite still, speechless and trembling with joy.

Without a word or any greeting

whatever the son walked in and stood gazing about the room; then he sat down in the only chair and demanded. food; he demanded it coarsely, as a brutal man demands a right, and when his mother set before him the only food that was there he foully cursed it and her. Nevertheless, he ate every particle, not asking if she were hungry.

Having finished his meal, he lit his pipe and proceeded to examine the contents of the room, the old woman watching him with apprehensive eyes. The oak box arrested his attention, and he went over to it and raised the lid.

"There's nothing there, dearie," said the mother; "nothing at all but a few bits of things for myself."

He made no answer, but proceeded to pull out a web of coarse linen. At the sight of it she instantly became combative.

"Let that be; it's mine."

The son turned a sullen look at her over his shoulder.

"There's good stuff here," he said. "And there to stop. Come away; 'tis mine."

66

"'Tis good stuff-too good to stop here," he went on. "I can sell it."

With ruthless hands he dragged out the linen, so that it fell in untidy folds. across the floor.

"Let it be, you dog!" the woman shrieked madly, trying to open his hands and tear the linen from him. "Oh, the thief that he is-the thief!"

As they struggled together the box was shaken and something fell from the linen to the bottom.

"That's money!" exclaimed the son, and he threw the white web on the ground and searched in the box, finding two coins covered with white line, over-sewn at the edges and worked with a cross.

"What's here?" he asked. "What's in them?"

"The pennies for my eyes," answered the old woman with a bitter wail in her voice, and, holding the crumpled linen to her straight bosom, she

went on:

"It's my shroud, my clean, decent shroud."

¶ "The living want no grave-clothes," said the son. "I must have money; I've deserted, and they'll shoot me if I'm caught."

"Mother of Jesus! You'll not sell it?" she implored.