LABOR: Wanted: Millions of Jobs

Winter tramped prematurely out of the Northwest last week. A Montana stockman died in a blizzard. Minnesota lakes were skimmed with ice. Michigan had icicles. All around the Great Lakes storm-warning signals crackled in a 50-m.p.h. blast. Car radiators froze in Illinois. A heavy snowstorm swept Dunkirk, N. Y., wrecked power and telephone lines. At Eighteen Mile Creek, N. Y., 2,500 automobiles were stalled overnight in drifts.

Jobless men in half of the 48 States drew their frayed coats closer, shivered at the prospect of a hard, hungry winter.

With the cold snap came a new hustle and bustle among public men in many a city throughout the land to do something about Unemployment. During the summer, when men out of work were not perishing of hunger and cold, this major problem was largely allowed to coast along on the theory that autumn would bring economic improvements. When no business upturn appeared, widespread preparations were started to avert another winter of long breadlines.

Last week the Department of Labor announced that September employment had risen a bare 1% over August due to seasonal demands. This was certainly not the big fall bulge that had been expected.

Manufacturing employment was under the August levels. And just how many jobless there were in the land neither the Department of Labor nor anybody else knew for sure. The U. S. Census Bureau last April counted 2,500,000. The American Federation of Labor estimates 3,000,000 plus. Campaigning Democrats insist there are more than 5,000,000.

In Washington. President Hoover concluded that the Federal Government would have to renew its indirect efforts to help carry the jobless through the winter.

One by one he summoned potent citizens —Bernard Mannes Baruch, Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Charles Hayden, Professor William Zebina Ripley—for conferences described as “dinner, cigars, economics.” Vith doleful tales of hard times ringing in his ears, the President next appointed a special Cabinet Commission to “formulate . . . plans continuing and strengthening the organization of Federal activities for employment during the winter.” Its members: Secretary of Commerce Lamont (chairman), Secretary of Labor Davis, Secretary of the Interior Wilbur, Secretary of War Hurley, Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, Federal Reserve Board Governor Meyer.

The President did not propose any new or concrete scheme of Federal relief to this Commission. He reverted to the same abstract principles he set up last year: 1) State co-operation for public works; 2) development of national industries; 3) new Federal construction. He praised local efforts to supply jobs in Illinois, Detroit, New York (see below), wound up with this declaration: “As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to those of our citizens who are in honest difficulties.” In Boston the American Federation of Labor concluded its soth convention, at which Unemployment was topmost in the minds of the 418 delegates. A resolution was adopted calling upon President Hoover to appoint a national committee to deal more effectively with joblessness. (The President’s Cabinet Commission was named 48 hours later.) The A. F. of L.

formally favored the five-day week, postponed until next year consideration of the five-hour day. Compulsory unemployment insurance was vetoed as a form of “dole.” The U. S. was asked to tighten up labor immigration. Massachusetts’ Democratic Senator David Ignatius Walsh flayed the Republican Administration, declared Congress should vote the President, in such a labor crisis emergency, powers equal to those given him in war.

Other doings of the A. F. of L. meeting: 1.) re-election of William Green as President; 2) selection of Vancouver, B. C. for next year’s meeting; 3) a demand for 2-75% beer (but no repeal of the 18th Amendment); 4) California pardons for famed Convicts Mooney & Billings; 5) enactment of anti-injunction legislation;

6) support for Southern textile strikers;

7) criticism of Secretary of the Navy Adams for attempted navy yard wage reductions.

Boston city council ordered $1,000,000 spent for unemployment relief and directed Mayor James M. Curley to organize a civic committee to raise $2,000,000 more.

In New York City a million dollars was voted into the 1931 budget to relieve physical distress among the unemployed this winter. In two months a free municipal employment agency has found jobs for 11,991 workers. Charging that Mayor Walker “did nothing while the jobless starved,” Red rioters last week broke into City Hall, disrupted a Board of Estimate meeting. Yelled a Communist at the Mayor: “Grafter!” Yelled back the Mayor: “You dirty whelp!” The whack of police clubs subdued the troublemakers.

Meanwhile Manhattan’s most potent tycoons and bankers assembled in the office of Seward Prosser, board chairman of Bankers Trust Co. to set up a unique unemployment relief agency. Among its sponsors were Owen D. Young (General Electric), George Fisher Baker Jr. (First National Bank), Thomas Cochran (Morgan partner), Walter Sherman Gifford (A.

T. & T.), Charles Hayden (Hayden, Stone), Thomas William Lament (Morgan partner), Gordon Sohn Rentschler (National City Bank), Charles Hamilton Sabin (Guaranty Trust), Myron Charles Taylor (U. S. Steel), Albert Henry Wiggin (Chase National Bank), William Hartman Woodin (American Car & Foundry), Solomon R. Guggenheim and Alfred Emanuel Smith. As an Emergency Employment Committee, they prepared to raise by private subscription $150,000 per week throughout the winter to make jobs for 10,000 unemployed heads of families.

Each man would be hired at $15 per week to work in parks, public institutions, other non-profit-making places. Declared Mr.

Prosser: “The present unemployment situation is of such a nature that it constitutes a definite civic responsibility. . . .

The committee is, of course, aware that its efforts cannot meet the situation entirely.” In Chicago, Governor Louis Lincoln Emmerson of Illinois met industrial leaders with a view to appointing a State Unemployment Commission. The State’s jobless were estimated at 400,000.

While public charities planned a $12,-000,000 relief fund for this winter, plain citizens were asked to buy 25^ “charity currency” which entitled a jobless man to a meal and a night’s lodging at the old Cook County Jail. William Wrigley Jr.

donated a five-story building to the Salvation Army to house 2,000 men out of work. The Daily News opened its “help wanted” ad columns free for a fortnight to all employers. The City Council revived an old plan to make four big railroads elevate their tracks over street crossings at a cost of $14,000,000.

In Detroit, Mayor Frank Murphy began to make good on the campaign promises of unemployment relief which helped his election. Among other things he: 1) opened booths where 84,000 unemployed registered for work;— 2) got a promise of 25,000 extra part-time jobs from 20 of the city’s industrial leaders including Edsel Bryant Ford, Charles T. and Lawrence P.

Fisher (General Motors), Walter Percy Chrysler, Alvan Macauley (Packard), Du Bois Young (Hupp), William J. McAneeny (Hudson), Edward S. Evans (Detroit Aircraft); 3) got a promise of 1,000 “rotating” jobs per week from big merchants; 4) rotated 400 jobless per day on municipal construction; 5) used the schools to collect clothes to help the needy.

Big contributions last week to the city’s community fund: Edsel Ford, $130,000; Senator James Couzens, $120,000; the Fisher family, $125,000; General Motors, $100,000.

In Akron, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and B. F. Goodrich Co. put most of their departments on a six-hour day as an emergency means of providing for the largest number of employes.

In Kansas City Chevrolet, Fisher Body and American Cigar plants, Montgomery Ward, Sears, Roebuck and National Bellas Hess mail order houses arranged to employ 2,500 more help.

*;The Census Bureau fixed Detroit’s jobless last April at 78,153.