J. ELLIOT ROS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 ACO 
 
 15 78
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK
 
 *1 SEEK WOBK NOT CHARITY I"
 
 THE 
 
 RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ELLIOT ROSS, C.S.R, Ph.D. 
 
 LECTURER IN ETHICS, NEWMAN HALL, 
 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 
 
 "Why stand you here all the day idle ? They say 
 to him: because no man hath hired us." 
 
 —Matt. XX, 6-7. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 19171 by 
 THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 
 
 437 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 401 West Twenty-first Street, Austin, Texas 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Cum permissu superiorum. 
 
 John J. Hughes, C.S.P., 
 
 Superior-General. 
 
 IMPRIMATUR. 
 
 ^ Nicholas Alotsius Gallagher, 
 
 Bishop of Galveston. 
 
 tfWfVERSiTY OF so::!:::^:: c ,:.: :::::a l:brars
 
 
 In time of war prepare for peace ! When 
 the unprecedented demand for labor 
 caused by war orders ceases, we shall 
 undoubtedly experience the evils of un- 
 employment as we have in the past. We 
 should not live in a fool's paradise of un- 
 sound war prosperity, but should now be 
 making provision to lessen the shock that 
 will come when we are suddenly forced to 
 adjust ourselves to peace conditions. Let 
 us not forget the winter scenes of 1914-15 
 and of other years when we saw our army 
 of unemployed mobilized. 
 
 1 <4kbliOi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAoa 
 
 The Extent and Evils of Unemployment . . 1 
 Lack of information as to extent of unemploy- 
 ment — There should be a government survey of 
 unemployment at once — Private estimates place 
 the number out of work in winter 1915-16 at 
 2,000,000 — Unemployment is a normal phe- 
 nomenon of industry — How unemployment af- 
 fects those out of work, their dependents, 
 charitably minded people, business men, and the 
 whole country. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Every Man Has a Right to Work .... 22 
 Remedy for unemployment is not charity — It is 
 a recognition that each man has a right to 
 work — Opinion of the moralists — The correlative 
 duty to furnish the opportunity rests upon the 
 State. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The State's Duty to the Temporarily Unemployed 43 
 The unemployed divide into those temporarily
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 out of work and those unemployable — For the 
 first there should be employment bureaus; co- 
 ordination of seasonal occupations; and unem- 
 ployment insurance. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The State's Duty to the Unemployable — the 
 
 Capable 63 
 
 There is no place in competitive industry for 
 many capable men — Yet there is work to be 
 done — The State (municipalities, States, and 
 Federal authorities) should create opportunity 
 to work — This might be cutting wood, breaking 
 stone, draining swamps, building roads, etc. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The State's Duty to the Unemployable — the 
 
 Incapable 82 
 
 Many can't be employed in private industry be- 
 cause of some defect, physical or moral — State 
 should recognize them as a class apart — Pre- 
 vent their production as far as possible — But 
 there will always be some, and for them special 
 institutions should be created — Already there 
 are Good Shepherd Homes for women, and 
 there should be similar ones for men.
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Duty of the Individual 102 
 
 While the duty corresponding to a man's right to 
 work rests upon the State, each individual must 
 do what he can to influence governmental 
 action — We have developed our physical re- 
 sources, now we should develop our hmiian 
 engines and dynamos.
 
 Work is the mission of man in this Earth. A day 
 is ever struggling forward, a day will arrive in some 
 approximate degree, when he who has no work to do, 
 by whatever name he may be named, will not find it 
 good to show himself in our quarter of the Solar Sys- 
 tem. . . . 
 
 Can the poor man that is willing to work, always 
 find work, and live by his work ? Statistic Inquiry . . . 
 has no answer to give. Legislation presupposes the 
 answer — to be in the affirmative. A large postulate; 
 which should have been made a proposition of ; which 
 should have been demonstrated, made indubitable to 
 all persons! 
 
 A man willing to work, and unable to find it, is 
 perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune's inequality 
 exhibits under this sun. Burns expresses feelingly 
 what thoughts it gave him: a poor man seeking work; 
 seeking leave to toil that he might be fed and shel- 
 tered ! That he might but be put on a level with the 
 four-footed workers of the Planet which is his ! 
 
 There is not a horse willing to work but can get food 
 and shelter in requital ; a thing this two-footed worker 
 has to seek for, to solicit occasionally in vain. He is 
 nobody 's two-footed worker ; he is not even anybody 's 
 slave. And yet he is a two-iooted worker; it is cur- 
 rently reported that there is an immortal soul in him, 
 sent down out of Heaven into the Earth ; and one be- 
 holds him seeking for this! — Nay, what will a wise 
 Legislature say, if it turn out that he cannot find it ; 
 that the answer to their postulate proposition is not 
 affirmative but negative? 
 
 Carlyle, Essays, VI, 122, 124, 125.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EXTENT AND EVILS OP UNEMPLOYMENT 
 
 OUR army has mobilized. But it is a 
 vei^ different army from that staining 
 the fields of Europe with blood. It has no 
 guns, its men are not clothed in neat khaki ; 
 no gorgeous banners wave proudly over its 
 ranks ; no bands stir the souls of its members 
 to deeds of heroism for hearth and country. 
 Our army, as a recent cartoon depicted it, is 
 an army of unemployed derelicts that stands 
 all the day idle, shivering in the cold winds 
 as it forms a long line around some soup- 
 kitchen or bread-house. It is a defeated 
 
 1
 
 2 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 army, and it marches with the shambling, 
 uncertain gait that comes from failure. 
 
 We do not know accurately how many 
 men make up this army. There is no ofl&cial 
 roster kept of enlistment and discharge. No 
 recruiting office with a high standard of 
 physical fitness bars one's entrance and no 
 court martial discharges for inefficiency or 
 bad conduct. It is the easiest army in the 
 world to get into, and the hardest to get out 
 of. Desertion is difficult, often impossible, 
 yet it marks the only path to honorable dis- 
 charge from this most paradoxical of armies. 
 
 It has been our habit in this coimtry to 
 talk long and loudly about freedom, and to 
 contrast our easy going methods with the 
 galling espionage of the police systems of 
 Europe. Fourth-of-July orators never tire 
 of thanking heaven and George Washington 
 that every American is free to work out his 
 own salvation, vocal, journalistic, or eco-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 8 
 
 nomic, without interference from the powers 
 that be. But just what does this freedom 
 amount to? Are all the people free every 
 day as well as on the Fourth of July ? And 
 does that freedom really work out salvation 
 for all, or does it work the salvation of the 
 few and the destruction of the many ? 
 
 In many cases our boasted freedom is a 
 freedom to starve, a freedom to have one's 
 community demoralized by shiftless wander- 
 ing laborers, a freedom to work out one's 
 own complete demoralization and that of 
 others without let or hindrance from those 
 whose duty it is to procure the common good. 
 Unfortunately for those who have work, as 
 well as for those who have it not, government 
 does not interfere even to tell us the extent of 
 this evil. Yet until we can know precisely 
 how many are out of work, recommendations 
 to improve conditions must be somewhat 
 vague and general. Say, for instance, that
 
 4 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 you wish to co-ordinate industries in such a 
 way that those thrown out by one during a 
 slack season will be taken on by another. 
 Obviously, the first thing to do is to know 
 how many are left idle in this way before you 
 can say that certain other lines of work 
 where busy seasons come at this time can 
 take them on. 
 
 The first thing that should be done, there- 
 fore, is to have a thorough government sur- 
 vey of unemployment. Let us know accu- 
 rately the extent of this phenomenon, let us 
 have some official figures upon which stu- 
 dents can rely. Such a survey should tell 
 us not merely how many persons are out of 
 work on a certain day, but it should exhibit 
 fluctuations in employment in each industry 
 throughout the year so that something could 
 be done towards co-ordination. It would be 
 well to know that two million men lost one 
 hundred days each in a year, but it would be
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 6 
 
 better to know how many days were lost each 
 month so as to see how far co-ordination 
 would remedy the situation. 
 
 Until we do get such a government survey, 
 however, we must be content with private 
 estimates. These are really more or less 
 shrewd guesses. During the winter of 1914- 
 1915, the American Association for Labor 
 Legislation attempted to determine the ex- 
 tent of unemployment, and its conclusion 
 was that its ^'questionnaires have served to 
 emphasize the most important present-day 
 fact about unemployment; namely, that we 
 know practically nothing about it and have 
 no statistics available." (American Labor 
 Legislation Review, November, 1915, p. 
 475.) 
 
 However, John B. Andrews, the secretary 
 of this Association, thinks that the most con- 
 servative estimate would designate two mil- 
 lion wage-earners as unemployed in the
 
 6 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 United States during the winter of 1915- 
 1916. (^* American Cities and the Preven- 
 tion of Unemplojrment, " in The American 
 City, February, 1916, p. 117.) 
 
 It must not be supposed that this problem 
 is forced upon us by the European war and 
 that it will disappear once peace is declared. 
 This great cataclysm doubtless increased un- 
 employment in this country by demoralizing 
 our foreign trade, but the problem has been 
 with us for years. The war has but forced 
 our attention to a situation that should long 
 since have been attended to, but which might 
 have continued to escape our notice had it 
 not become so acute. Now, perhaps, we have 
 had the necessary stimulus to arouse us to 
 action that will deal effectively with normal 
 unemployment. 
 
 For unemployment is normal. Charles 
 Booth noted long ago in his admirable sur- 
 vey of the poor of London that competitive
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 7 
 
 industry tends to produce a fringe of unem- 
 ployed. Recently the Chicago Municipal 
 Markets Commission reiterated this judg- 
 ment. ' ' Unemployment, ' ' it declared, * * is an 
 annual recurring, ever-present, normal con- 
 dition of the maladjustment of industry and 
 business. The absence of unemployment 
 should rather be considered unusual and ex- 
 traordinary and not its presence in our 
 midst." {Journal of Criminal Law and 
 Criminology, July, 1915, p. 299.) 
 
 Even comparatively steady employments 
 have slack seasons. Thus it was found by 
 students of the Catholic University at Wash- 
 ington, D. C, that there was a difference of 
 fifty per cent, in the summer and winter pay- 
 rolls of the Engineer Department of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia. And the Factory Com- 
 mission of New York State found variations 
 of thirty to forty per cent, in the working 
 forces of some industries comparatively free
 
 8 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 from seasonal variations in trade volume. 
 (American Statistical Association, Sept., 
 1915, p. 612.) 
 
 Further light is thrown upon the extent of 
 unemployment by the experience of charity 
 organizations. Examining figures furnished 
 by the organized charities of New York, Bos- 
 ton, and Baltimore, Amos G. Warner found 
 that one-third of the applicants required 
 work, not relief. (American Charities, rev. 
 ed.. New York, 1908, p. 53.) 
 
 So far as my own experience goes, two- 
 thirds would seem much nearer the mark, 
 and I believe that if we could trace the life 
 histories of the other third we would find 
 that many of them would never have reached 
 this condition of dependence had there been 
 proper facilities for furnishing them with 
 work when they first started upon the down- 
 ward path. 
 
 But even though we discount these esti-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 9 
 
 mates to a very considerable degree, and 
 even though we confess to a lack of suffi- 
 ciently definite information, yet we know 
 that unemployment in all its phases is one 
 of the most important problems of social ad- 
 justment. It is important enough in itself, 
 God knows, to warrant all possible atten- 
 tion on the part of statesmen, but it is even 
 more important on account of its cancerous 
 ramifications throughout the whole social 
 body. 
 
 For unemployment does not affect merely 
 the million or so who are idle. It affects 
 other millions, wives and children and de- 
 pendents who are intimately connected with 
 the unemployed, and just as really, though 
 less obviously, it affects those who are not 
 unemployed. Whatever may be the height 
 and depth of our selfish disregard for others, 
 there is no escaping the fact that when the 
 devil takes the hindmost the jar of that tak-
 
 10 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ing is felt by every member of the body 
 politic. 
 
 God laid upon disobedient man the obli- 
 gation of earning his bread in the sweat of 
 his brow. But his brother man, less merci- 
 ful than God, has made heavier that burden 
 by refusing him a living wage no matter 
 how he sweats, and sometimes (as is happen- 
 ing to this army of unemployed) by the 
 stronger refusing to the weaker the very 
 right to sweat! 
 
 "Nowadays it is turned privilege 
 To have only God's curse on us and not man's." 
 
 And it is a weighty curse. For there is noth- 
 ing harder in life, perhaps, than for a self- 
 respecting man to tramp the streets in use- 
 less searching for work when none is to be 
 found, to return at night to hungry wife and 
 children with hands empty and no prospect 
 of their being filled.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 11 
 
 You who have scorned the laborer for his 
 vices, who have smelt liquor upon a beggar or 
 an applicant for work and therefore refused 
 him, think for a moment of the temptation 
 pulling at his heart — and at his stomach. 
 If you were cold and hungry and wet, if all 
 your efforts had only made the black despair 
 of poverty grip you the harder, and the sa- 
 loon were the only place that offered warmth 
 and shelter and food and cheer and tempo- 
 rary oblivion — would you be strong enough 
 to fight it? Possibly. 
 
 But there are hundreds of thousands who 
 are not. They take the first drink, and the 
 second, and the third. The habit grows upon 
 them, and soon they are no longer self-re- 
 specting workmen out of work, but profes- 
 sional beggars and tramps. Their ambition 
 is no longer to find work. It is to get the 
 wherewithal to obtain liquor. They can no 
 longer help themselves. And if they go a
 
 12 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 little farther they can no longer be helped. 
 A sodden, brutish content takes possession 
 of their souls and they are ruined, almost be- 
 yond redemption. 
 
 Recently there appeared in one of our big 
 dailies a cartoon poignantly depicting the 
 beginning and the end of unemployment. 
 Two ragged men sit on a bench in a public 
 square. One slouches down upon the seat, 
 his ears drawn into his collar, his hands in 
 his pockets, a perfect portrayal of the man 
 who has given up the fight. The other has 
 not sunk so far. He is leaning forward, 
 his face in his hands, his attitude not yet one 
 of unresentful impotence. His companion 
 says : ' ^ Cheer up, bo, think of the men in the 
 trenches." And the reply eloquently voices 
 the suffering of the self-respecting unem- 
 ployed. *^Huh! — They've got a chance to 
 be shot!" 
 
 There is some hope for the man who would
 
 ,THE RIGHT TO WORK 13 
 
 rather die than endure this existence unwor- 
 thy of a man. He still has some fight in him. 
 If a life-line can be thrown him, he will be 
 saved, but the man who has ceased to desire 
 to work is hopeless. All internal resistance 
 has been broken down. No vestige of self- 
 respect or back-bone is left. If he is to be 
 saved, it must be from outside and by being 
 built up anew. 
 
 But there are still blacker shadows to this 
 picture. If it were merely a question of two 
 million men more or less responsible for 
 their own fate, sinking into this demoralized 
 condition, it would be serious enough. They 
 might reasonably expect Christians with a 
 command laid upon them to love their neigh- 
 bors as themselves, to do something to help 
 them. But unfortunately these men are not 
 simply dropping back themselves. They are 
 pulling others with them. Millions of de- 
 pendent women and children are being
 
 14 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 dragged into the slough of despond because 
 the heads of families are no longer able to 
 cope with the problem of support. Wives 
 are forced out into casual employment, home 
 duties neglected, children run wild or have 
 their lives ground out in soul- and body-de- 
 stroying toil. 
 
 We have heard much recently of the hor- 
 rible evils of child and woman labor. Thou- 
 sands of children are stunted in mind and 
 body, because they must take their place in 
 industry before their time. Children have 
 actually been killed by excessive work in fac- 
 tories, and others who do not go to work have 
 hardly a better fate. In every school in the 
 poorer districts of our big cities, you can 
 see the pinched and sallow faces, the spindle 
 legs, bespeaking slow starvation. Women, 
 too, at the most critical periods, when other 
 lives are depending so directly upon theirs, 
 are compelled to such heavy labor as saps
 
 iTHE RIGHT TO WORK 16 
 
 not only their own vitality but the strength 
 of the coming generation. How can they 
 possibly nourish two on what is not sufficient 
 for one? How can the children born into 
 such conditions be anything but weak and 
 sickly and fretful ? 
 
 Directly or indirectly unemployment is re- 
 sponsible for all these ills. For even when 
 the head of the family has work, it is the fear 
 of unemployment that makes him accept less 
 than a living wage, and then drives his wife 
 and children to eke out his pittance with 
 their own. This is the sword of Damocles 
 that is constantly over the helpless work- 
 man's head. He does not know at what mo- 
 ment it may fall to maim forever not only 
 himself but also his loved ones. 
 
 But this does not exhaust the evils of un- 
 employment. Like some great octopus it is 
 reaching out its fearful tentacles to draw 
 millions upon millions into its greedy maw.
 
 16 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 It is not content with its immediate victims 
 and their dependents, but it poisons the life 
 of the whole community. 
 
 Obviously, the Good Samaritan is affected. 
 For whence come the food and clothing and 
 shelter that the idle need ? These men must 
 be supported in some way. If there were 
 two million men idle last winter, then for 
 every day of idleness at least two million 
 dollars in wages were lost. And while, nat- 
 urally, this huge army does not spend as 
 much in times of idleness as it did when em- 
 ployed, nevertheless, it must need tremen- 
 dous sums for its support. Some of this 
 money comes from past savings, but much 
 must also come from those who are still em- 
 ployed. The longer idleness continues, the 
 more of a burden does this army of unem- 
 ployed become. 
 
 Yet another loss to the community is de- 
 rived from the fact that if these men had
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 17 
 
 continued working they would have added to 
 the wealth of the nation about two and one- 
 half times their wages. That is to say, if 
 their wages would have been a billion dol- 
 lars, the total product of their labor would 
 have been worth, before deducting their pay, 
 three and one-half billions. Such a loss of 
 national wealth would be serious under any 
 conditions, but it is doubly serious when we 
 are paying a fuel bill, as it were, to burn it 
 up. If a fire or earthquake or flood were to 
 destroy this much wealth every paper in the 
 country would deplore it. Why, then, do we 
 calmly ignore this much worse condition, 
 which yearly engulfs not alone material 
 wealth but the very life's blood of the nation 
 in ruined manhood and womanhood and 
 childhood ! 
 
 Again, the business men who have to bear 
 the burden of charity to support these unem- 
 ployed must do so from decreased resources,
 
 18 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 because of the lessened purchasing power of 
 the public. No man can prosper in business 
 unless his neighbor prospers too. The mer- 
 chant is engaged in selling, and the greater 
 his neighbor's power to pay, the more he can 
 sell. The corner groceryman realizes this 
 well. He knows that if his patrons are out 
 of work, his bills will be unpaid ; and others 
 are affected similarly, though not so visibly. 
 Inability to sell reacts, too, upon the wages 
 of employees as well as upon the profits of 
 employers, so that the effects of unemploy- 
 ment reach all classes — the workmen em- 
 ployed, the merchant, the Good Samaritan, 
 the priest and the Levite. 
 
 Still further, the fact that two million per- 
 sons are consuming without producing 
 means that the cost of living will rise. For 
 prices will be higher than they would be were 
 the supply increased by the possible product 
 of all these idle workers.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 19 
 
 There is, then, no way in which any one 
 can pass by on the other side of these unfor- 
 tunates. Whether or not their hearts are 
 touched with Christian charity, the blight of 
 their brother's misfortune will shadow their 
 fortune. Only the very few, such as loan 
 sharks, who make a business of preying upon 
 the poor, can profit by large masses being out 
 of work. All legitimate business suffers di- 
 rectly or indirectly. 
 
 It has frequently been said that each 
 workman in Europe is carrying a soldier on 
 his back. But it is a vigorous soldier who 
 can be of some use to his country. With us 
 the workers are carrying an army on their 
 backs, but it is a helpless, a useless, a vicious 
 consuming and non-producing army that can 
 do the country no good under any conditions. 
 It is almost as if each laborer were carrying 
 a foreign, invading soldier on his back. 
 
 We have often heard it said during the
 
 20 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 present war that Europe has reverted to 
 barbarism. Our people are aghast at the 
 destruction of life and property going on 
 abroad. They thank God that they are not 
 as other men, that they have more Christian 
 charity, more love of their brothers than to 
 indulge in such senseless slaughter. Yet it 
 might be better for us to stand afar off in the 
 temple and strike our breasts while asking 
 God to be merciful to us sinners. For the 
 comparison is not entirely to our credit. 
 
 The soldier dies with an ideal in his heart, 
 with love for his country and his hearth, 
 with his manhood intact. Our poor ragged 
 soldier does not, perhaps, lose his life — ^he 
 loses only his self-respect, his manhood, his 
 faith in his fellow man, his faith in God ! In 
 this army of ours there is none of the morale 
 that comes from discipline, none of the spir- 
 itual exaltation that is induced by consecra- 
 tion to a cause, none of the confidence and
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 21 
 
 efficiency inspired by trusted leaders. Our 
 soldier has strength but is forbidden to use 
 it, has protectiveness that is turned to bitter 
 raging impotence, he has skill which is lost 
 in the gradual relaxing of physical and 
 moral fibre. His vision becomes shifty, his 
 muscles relaxed, his will feeble, and if he 
 does not escape in time it will take a miracle 
 to save him. Almost literally he will have 
 to be born again if he is to be redeemed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 EVEKY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 WE have seen something of the extent 
 and evils of unemployment. Those 
 directly injured — the actual workers and 
 their dependents — amount up into the mil- 
 lions, while the whole country is indirectly 
 affected. And this condition is at the bottom 
 of much drink and sickness and almost all 
 poverty. When we take a broad survey in 
 this way of all its ramifications, it is almost 
 impossible to exaggerate the importance of 
 this problem. 
 
 Unquestionably the fact of so many men 
 being out of work demands action, and 
 prompt action. But at the same time it de- 
 
 22
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 23 
 
 mands that the action shall be wise and pru- 
 dent. To go off half cocked, as it were, to 
 be led by a kindly heart rather than a mature 
 judgment may merely add to our difficulties, 
 and our last state may be worse than our 
 first. For though conditions are bad enough, 
 they are better than they might be. 
 
 It may be well, therefore, at the very start 
 to point out certain things that should not be 
 done. For, while it is good to be sorry for 
 having made a mistake, it is better to exer- 
 cise such foresight as will prevent mistakes 
 being made. 
 
 To begin with, then, the remedy for unem- 
 ployment is not the free distribution of food 
 and clothing. Soup-kitchens, bread-lines, in- 
 discriminate charity are palliatives that may 
 make the disease worse than it is at present. 
 It may be necessary sometimes to give im- 
 mediate assistance. A man who has been out 
 of work so long that he is half starved or
 
 M THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 who is too weak to work may need food 
 above everything else. 
 
 But such measures should be recognized 
 frankly as merely temporary. They do not 
 affect the real problem in the least. The im- 
 mediate need of the applicant is relieved, but 
 he will be back again to-morrow. And per- 
 haps to-morrow he will not be alone. In- 
 discriminate charity in the sphere of philan- 
 thropy is like fertilizer on a wheat field — it 
 produces a more abundant crop. Where one 
 beggar grew before, there will be two under 
 such a system, or lack of system. What we 
 need is something to stop the supply. It 
 may be necessary to pour oil and wine into a 
 man's wounds, but we should also do some- 
 thing to prevent men getting into a condi- 
 tion where they need such charity. 
 
 Many people strive to salve their con- 
 sciences by spreading a king's feast for the 
 poor at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and re-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 25 
 
 fuse to consider their necessities the other 
 three hundred and sixty-four days of the 
 year. They send to the Salvation Army or 
 other charitable organizations their dis- 
 carded clothing in all stages of careless dis- 
 repair. But even if it were possible for 
 good-hearted people to assume the entire 
 support of the unemployed in a decent and 
 respectable manner, it would be far from de- 
 sirable. The person who for the first time 
 has accepted charity has abated something 
 of his self-respect. A second application is 
 easier, and then the down grade leading to 
 dependence is short and easily travelled. 
 
 Men soon lose the desire to work hard for 
 a living when charitably minded folk are 
 willing to relieve them of the necessity. Our 
 pity should never make us forget that the 
 command to earn one 's bread in the sweat of 
 one 's brow is beneficent and necessary. It is 
 false kindness to dispense with that law,
 
 26 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 and the consequences are even more disas- 
 trous with poor people than with rich. Both 
 classes — the upper and the lower tenth — 
 prove that there is something sacramental 
 about work, that idleness leads to physical 
 and moral disintegration, and that every one 
 needs the uplifting influence of useful ac- 
 tivity. 
 
 "Get leave to work 
 In this world — 'tis the best you get at all; 
 For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts 
 Than men in benediction. God says 'Sweat 
 For foreheads:' men say, 'Crowns.' And so we 
 
 are crowned, 
 Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel 
 Which snaps with a sudden spring. Get work, 
 
 get work ! 
 Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get." 
 {Mrs. Browning, "Aurora Leigh," Book II.) 
 
 Our first conviction, therefore, in ap- 
 proaching this question should concern the 
 essential blessedness of work and its healing 
 power for social evils. Hence any one who
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 27 
 
 is able to work, whether rich or poor, should 
 work. For there is imposed on every one the 
 duty to labor (Cathrein, MoralpMlosophie, 
 II, 59). ''As a bird to fly, so is man made to 
 work. Wisely, too, has the Creator placed 
 in man 's nature many needs that are not im- 
 mediately satisfied, so that he may not lack 
 the motive for a many-sided activity and de- 
 velopment of his powers. For most men 
 labor is necessary in order that they may 
 honorably provide for and support them- 
 selves and those dependent upon them. 
 Labor is also necessary that men may avoid 
 certain moral dangers and temptations ; ac- 
 cording to the old adage, idleness is the be- 
 ginning of every vice. Finally, labor is use- 
 ful, not merely for the preservation of 
 health, but also for the acquirement of moral 
 virtues and merit for eternity." {Id.) 
 
 Those who are able to work, but won't, 
 should be made to work ; those who are anx-
 
 28 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ious to work, but who cannot find access to 
 the land or tools, should be provided with 
 the opportunity. Society is wrongly organ- 
 ized unless work is guaranteed. It is a cruel 
 mockery to tell a man, ^'If you work, you 
 must get a sufficient wage to support your- 
 self and family in frugal comfort" — and 
 then let him starve for want of work. We 
 need more than a minimum wage law; we 
 need also to provide the opportunity of 
 working for such a wage. A man, by the 
 very fact that he is a man, has a right to a 
 living wage, but he also has a right to 
 work. 
 
 This, then, is our second conviction in ap- 
 proaching this problem of unemployment — 
 that each man has a right to work. 
 
 We are so accustomed to an exaggerated 
 individualism that this proposition seems 
 startling at first sight. The discredited the- 
 ories of a laissez faire age may yet obscure
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 29 
 
 our vision somewhat. However, it is neither 
 right nor natural that men should be allowed 
 to starve because they cannot find work, nor 
 that they should be fed on doles of charity 
 without working. It is an accident of the 
 capitalistic regime. But it has not accom- 
 panied other regimes, nor is it an essential 
 phenomenon of our present industrial 
 system. 
 
 If we go back through past periods of 
 economic history, we can see that this great 
 problem of unemplojmaent was practically 
 unknown. When the earth was being peo- 
 pled and her children looked out upon virgin 
 resources, all a man had to do was to use the 
 opportunities common to all. He could hunt 
 or fish or hew wood to his heart's content or 
 as his skill allowed. There was no one whose 
 permission he needed to ask if he wished 
 trout for dinner or fire to warm his hut. The 
 skins of beasts he killed furnished him with
 
 30 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 clothing as comfortable and satisfactory as 
 that made by a Fifth Avenue tailor. 
 
 Evidently, there was no question of unem- 
 ployment here. Of work there was always a 
 superabundance. If a man starved, it was 
 not for lack of work. Employment was the 
 natural and customary thing, unemployment 
 was unnatural and unusual. 
 
 Again, under a regime of serfdom or 
 slavery, there was ordinarily no problem of 
 employment. We have had slave uprisings 
 because too much work was placed upon 
 them, because they were required to make 
 bricks without straw, but whoever heard of 
 slaves rebelling because there was no work, 
 because there were no bricks to be made ? 
 
 A slave's w^ork was never done. The 
 amount of labor applicable to a plantation 
 was practically unlimited. It was the eas- 
 iest thing in the world to find work, and if 
 one didn't find it for himself, some one else
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 31 
 
 found it for him. An overseer with a black- 
 snake whip, even if he never used it, was al- 
 ways a possibility to stimulate exertion. 
 
 We should be extremely careful not to al- 
 low the familiarity of certain phenomena 
 attaching to the regime under which we live 
 to make us think them necessary and inevi- 
 table. Indeed, the fact that such unjust and 
 inhuman conditions as we have described in 
 the first chapter exist now without being 
 questioned indicates (paradoxical as it may 
 seem) that they did not always exist. For 
 if they had existed when the great Christian 
 moralists were writing, assuredly they would 
 have come in for their share of comment and 
 condemnation. 
 
 But as these men wrote under a regime 
 that was partly one of serfdom and partly 
 one of small self -employers, they did not 
 give to this question of the right to work the 
 consideration that is forced upon our at-
 
 32 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 tention, because for them the problem did 
 not exist. Thus St. Thomas in his epoch- 
 making Secunda Secundae makes no men- 
 tion of the question. In the society upon 
 which he looked out the opportunity to work 
 was almost always present, and there was 
 no use wasting time talking about such an 
 improbable hypothesis as that a man should 
 not have the chance to work. 
 
 To-day, however, the moralist faces an en- 
 tirely different situation. A few individuals 
 have appropriated the natural resources, 
 and as a man needs natural resources before 
 he can work, he is barred from working un- 
 less the owners allow it. If he needs a din- 
 ner and is willing to work for it by killing a 
 rabbit, as he might have done at one time in 
 the world's history, there may be a game- 
 keeper to arrest him for poaching. Or if he 
 wishes to make something (as he might have 
 done under a regime of hand work), he dis-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 33 
 
 covers that the raw materials have all been 
 appropriated or that he cannot work with- 
 out the use of tools belonging to some one 
 else. 
 
 At present the majority of men can work 
 only by permission of other men. In some 
 ways the modern laborer is worse off than 
 slave or serf, for they were assured at least 
 of food and clothing and shelter. Over him, 
 on the contrary, there hangs a nerve-racking 
 uncertainty. His living depends upon his 
 selling the only commodity he has, his labor, 
 and in that position he is worse off than the 
 seller of any other article. For a man who 
 offers oranges, for instance, can hold them 
 until to-morrow if the price is not satisfac- 
 tory, whereas the laborer cannot sell to-day's 
 labor to-morrow. It will have disappeared 
 completely, and to-morrow's supply will be 
 inferior if to-day he did not get sufficient 
 food to meet his physical needs.
 
 S4 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 What, then, is the answer that moralists 
 give when confronted with this situation? 
 Has a man a right to demand a market for 
 his labor! Has he a riglit to work? 
 
 It will be only among the very modern 
 writers that we shall find any discussion of 
 this subject. St. Thomas and his contem- 
 poraries, as we have seen, did not advert to 
 it because it was merely hypothetical in their 
 time. For St. Alphonsus, even, it was hardly 
 a practical question, and we need not be sur- 
 prised to find him discussing ''Labor" only 
 in relation to Sunday observance and fast- 
 ing. Leo XIII, it is true, was ex professo 
 and at length treating of the condition of 
 workingmen, but he was living in a country 
 where the effects of the industrial revolution 
 had not proceeded as far as in England and 
 the United States and where the less acute 
 phenomena of unemployment were further 
 tempered by extensive emigration. His fail-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 35 
 
 ure to mention this phase of the situation 
 was not, therefore, extraordinary. But it 
 seems rather curious that Lehmkuhl with 
 his interest in modern social problems 
 should have insisted strongly in his The- 
 ologia Moralis upon the duty to work while 
 completely passing over the right to work. 
 (The edition of 1902 is the one before me. 
 Perhaps in later editions or elsewhere he has 
 treated this point.) 
 
 Noldin has this short, though very clear, 
 reference : * ' Every man has a right to work, 
 that is, he has a right by just means to 
 seek labor which is lawful for him and to 
 perform that labor, and hence he has a 
 right to demand that others shall not hinder 
 him in the exercise of this right. This right 
 is founded in another right, that of pre- 
 serving and perfecting life, to which in- 
 dustrial labor is ordinarily necessary." 
 {Theologia Moralis, II, No. 69.)
 
 36 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 This principle is perfectly plain. And 
 thougli Noldin goes on to qualify his state- 
 ment, the qualification really means nothing 
 more than that the laborer has not a strict 
 right in commutative justice. Noldin 's 
 words are: **No one has a right to work, 
 that is, to demand that some one else 
 (whether a private individual or the State) 
 should offer or procure him work, even 
 though he be in need of the necessaries of 
 life." 
 
 The reason that Noldin gives for this qual- 
 ification — that ' ' in every case the obligation 
 of supplying lucrative employment is op- 
 posed to the right of property" — shows 
 clearly that he means it in the sense in which 
 we have explained it. For in the same way 
 the right of property is opposed to the obli- 
 gation of actually giving one's possessions 
 to another. Yet all theologians agree that a 
 person in extremest need has a right to take
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 37 
 
 what he needs, and that the possessor has 
 a duty in charity to give. 
 
 To prevent the disorders that would result 
 from asserting these rights, however, there 
 is a duty of legal justice incumbent upon the 
 State to furnish work to such as cannot oth- 
 erwise find it. When a government allows 
 such a private appropriation of property as 
 to close all opportunity of emplojrment to 
 any large class, it becomes responsible for 
 affording to each man some reasonable re- 
 turn for the opportunities that would other- 
 wise be his. Private property should never 
 be absolute. The State will not allow a pri- 
 vate individual who owns both sides of a 
 navigable river to close it to traffic or to 
 fishing, and as it sometimes compels indi- 
 vidual owners of large tracts of land to open 
 roads for the convenience of the public, so it 
 should keep open certain avenues to work 
 that would otherwise be closed by the selfish-
 
 38 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ness of individuals. This is a simple de- 
 mand of justice. 
 
 Each one, then, has a right in legal justice 
 to the opportunity to work. Noldin, indeed, 
 specifically admits this when the number of 
 unemployed is so great as to endanger the 
 good of the community. {Loc. cit.) For all 
 practical purposes this is to acknowledge 
 the right to work, since we have seen that 
 there can be no question but what this con- 
 dition is fulfilled. The man out of work is 
 interested in getting a job, and it is all one to 
 him whether the State is obliged in legal or 
 in commutative justice to supply it. 
 
 Cathrein, perhaps, brings this out more 
 clearly than Noldin. After speaking of the 
 laborer's insecurity of existence under the 
 present industrial order, he adds: "In or- 
 der to give the workman a sure basis for his 
 existence, there is ascribed to him a right to 
 work. However, this is not a universal,
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 39 
 
 strict right. No irrefutable reason for such 
 a [strict] right can be given. . . . But at 
 times society (the municipality or the 
 State) has the duty, according to its abil- 
 ity, to furnish laborers with remunerative 
 employment. For in the extremest need 
 each one has a right to take for himself, 
 wherever he finds it, what is necessary for 
 life. This right belongs also to the laborer. 
 And who will forbid him to unite with others, 
 who are in the same condition, in the attain- 
 ment of this object? From such a condition 
 of affairs there may easily arise the most 
 serious evils for the community. Hence the 
 authorities are bound to prevent this in some 
 way. The proper way is not the distribution 
 of alms, but the furnishing of lucrative 
 work. This is often to be had, though the 
 laborers do not know of it. Public employ- 
 ment bureaus are therefore to be com- 
 mended. . . . But if work is to be found in
 
 40 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 no other way, then the municipalities or the 
 State should undertake public improve- 
 ments (street paving, canals, and the like)." 
 (MoralphilosopJtie, II, p. 632.) 
 
 While there is no doubt that unemploy- 
 ment is so widespread as to cause serious 
 danger to the community, yet as a matter of 
 precision it is well to insist that the right to 
 support himself is inherent in each man, 
 and that even if there were only one citizen 
 who could not find this opportunity^ the 
 State would be obliged in legal justice to 
 furnish him the chance. 
 
 This is a perfectly legitimate conclusion 
 from the words of Leo XIII, and that 
 learned Pontiff would probably have drawn 
 it himself had his attention been called to it. 
 ^'The preservation of life," he writes in his 
 Encyclical on The Condition of Labor, 
 "is the bounden duty of each and all, and to 
 fail therein is a crime. It follows that each
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 41 
 
 one has a right to procure what is required 
 in order to live ; and the poor can procure it 
 in no other way than by work and wages." 
 The great social reform Pope concluded with 
 inexorable logic that this right to live im- 
 plied a right to a living wage : does it not at 
 the same time imply a right to work for this 
 wage ? If a man can live only by work, and 
 he has a right to live, there seems no escape 
 from the conclusion that he has a right to 
 work. For the right to a living wage with- 
 out the right to work is as profitable to an 
 unemployed laborer as is the water of a 
 mirage to a thirsty traveller. 
 
 We have seen how far Noldin and Lehm- 
 kuhl and Cathrein accept this doctrine. 
 They are not alone, however. Fr. Kelleher, 
 in his excellent book on Private Owner- 
 ship, sees the implications of such a system 
 and asserts that each one has a right to a job 
 or to its equivalent. And Cardinal Manning,
 
 42 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 though not a theologian nor a scientific social 
 worker, had considerable insight into social 
 conditions, and declared emphatically: 
 ^' Every man has a right to work or to 
 bread." (Purcell's Life of Cardinal Man- 
 ning, II, p. 656. 
 
 So far as I know, prominent non-Catholic 
 ethicists (if we exclude Socialists) have not 
 touched upon this specific point of the right 
 to work.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE state's duty TO THE TEMPORARH^Y UN- 
 EMPLOYED 
 
 WHEN unemployment is as extended as 
 it is in the United States, moralists 
 are agreed that the State has a duty in legal 
 justice to provide in some way for those out 
 of work. But before determining what is to 
 be done, we must realize that all are not un- 
 employed for the same reason; and hence 
 that the same treatment will not apply to all 
 alike. A remedy that is to be meted out to 
 all in the same way is by that very fact con- 
 demned. A careful diagnosis must be made 
 before any prudent steps can be taken to 
 mend matters. 
 
 In examining the situation, the first out- 
 
 43
 
 44 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 standing fact that strikes the observer is 
 that some of the unemployed are unemploy- 
 able — at least by private employers. This 
 may be because of some defect. (Cf. "The 
 Men We Lodge: a Eeport of the Advisory 
 Social Service Committee of the Municipal 
 Lodging House of New York City," Ameri- 
 can Labor Legislation Review, Nov., 1915, p. 
 607.) Even those who are able-bodied, but 
 who will not work, belong in this class, as 
 they need more discipline than the private 
 employer can afford to give. 
 
 Or it may be that a man is unemploj^able 
 in any private undertaking because there 
 may be no place for him. When industry is 
 organized for sale, no employer wants more 
 hands than he needs to make the goods he 
 can sell. If he takes on more, it is at a loss, 
 and he will be forced to give way to less kind- 
 hearted employers. 
 
 These two divisions of the unemployables
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 45 
 
 — the capable and the incapable — require the 
 making of work for them by the State, 
 though in different ways. The measure is so 
 distinct from the remedy that is necessary 
 for what may be called the temporarily un- 
 employed that its consideration can best be 
 deferred to another chapter. 
 
 The other class — those who can profitably 
 be used in competitive industry — may be 
 conveniently subdivided into three groups. 
 
 First of all, we have those belonging to 
 trades where work is steady, but a few days 
 are lost between each job. If the wages are 
 good, the loss of time can be looked upon as 
 an enforced vacation. What they need most 
 is information as to another job, and hence 
 employment bureaus are the proper solution. 
 
 Again, there are persons out of work be- 
 cause they are engaged in some seasonal oc- 
 cupation, such as logging, chopping cotton, 
 and the like. More than anything else they
 
 46 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 need a co-ordination of industries so tliat 
 they can move from one to another without 
 much loss of time. 
 
 And finally we have those who are only oc- 
 casionally out of work, as book-keepers, 
 typists, and printers. In addition to employ- 
 ment agencies, they need assistance till they 
 can find work, and the best way to give it to 
 them is by compulsory insurance. 
 
 We must not think because we make this 
 division of the unemployed that the rem- 
 edies do not overlap. As a matter of fact, 
 insurance and emploj^nent agencies will 
 help all three classes, and the man engaged 
 in some seasonal occupation will be helped 
 by all three remedies. 
 
 I. EMPLOYMENT BUREAUS 
 
 The object of an employment bureau is to 
 notify the jobless man of an opportunity to
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 47 
 
 work. Charitable agencies have long been 
 doing this task in a haphazard, systemless 
 sort of way, but the emplojonent bureau was 
 first efficiently developed, as a profitable en- 
 terprise, in certain limited spheres, such as 
 domestic service and teaching. Even to-day 
 some of these private undertakings are sat- 
 isfactorily serving both employers and em- 
 ployed. This is especially true where labor 
 requiring a certain technical preparation is 
 handled. 
 
 As a whole, however, private employment 
 agencies have fallen into disrepute on ac- 
 count of certain alleged abuses in connection 
 with them. They are said, for instance, 
 sometimes to have had agreements with an 
 employer to discharge men already em- 
 ployed in order that they might get another 
 fee from some other applicant. In large 
 centers like New York and Chicago, and in 
 jobs requiring no skill, such an operation
 
 48 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 seems entirely possible. At any rate, some 
 States have forbidden private agencies to 
 operate, except in so far as they deal with a 
 trained clientele to some extent able to de- 
 fend itself. 
 
 These possible abuses, and the nature of 
 the work requiring a large office force, elab- 
 orate record keeping, and wide experience 
 regarding labor conditions, have led to the 
 establishment of public bureaus by munici- 
 palities. States and the Federal Government. 
 
 To do the work effectively bureaus con- 
 ducted by each one of these governmental 
 agencies are necessary, or at least by the 
 municipalities and the Federal authorities. 
 A certain minute knowledge of conditions is 
 necessary to advise applicants quickly and 
 successfully, and at the same time a broad 
 survey of the field in order to direct the 
 larger migrations of labor. The chief object 
 of the local bureaus will be to assist those
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 49 
 
 who are tied to that particular place in some 
 way, whereas the national agency by adding 
 to the mobility of labor will help to stabilize 
 employment. 
 
 In the beginning of such a movement a 
 large amount of advertising will be neces- 
 sary to bring the bureaus before the employ- 
 ers and the unemployed. Both classes must 
 be educated to use these channels to supply 
 their respective wants. Until that is done, 
 special field agents will probably be neces- 
 sary to get in touch with employers. For 
 the side on which most bureaus fail to-day is 
 in finding jobs, not workers. Unfortu- 
 nately, the various governmental agencies 
 that have established bureaus so far have 
 been so parsimonious in their appropriations 
 that their efficiency has been seriously handi- 
 capped. An experiment with such a bureau 
 is worthless unless it is done on a large 
 enough scale to get definite results.
 
 50 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 Again, employment bureaus should have 
 ample funds for record keeping. To give 
 satisfaction to employers it is essential that 
 the bureau should know whom it is recom- 
 mending for a particular position, and it can 
 do so only b}^ a somewhat elaborate record. 
 And not only should the man 's qualifications 
 be put down, and the jobs that are vacant, 
 but some follow-up system should be used to 
 find out when a client secures employment 
 and whether he keeps it permanently, and 
 when jobs are filled, so as not to send a man 
 on a wild-goose chase. 
 
 If we had had but one-fourth as many 
 bureaus as we have, and they had been con- 
 ducted properly, we should now have some 
 valuable information as to the extent of un- 
 employment and unemployableness, and 
 their causes. But as it is, their statistics are 
 almost worthless. 
 
 Two limitations in regard to employ-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 51 
 
 ment bureaus should be borne in mind. 
 First, they do not create opportunities for 
 work. If the season is dull, a crisis is on, or 
 indeed even in normal times, they may be 
 obliged to tell applicants that there are no 
 jobs. Again, they do not help the laborer 
 immediately and directly. Should he be ab- 
 solutely destitute, it will go hard with him 
 till he gets a job (if he should be so fortu- 
 nate) and until he gets his pay at the end of 
 a week's work, perhaps. Emplo^nnent 
 agencies, therefore, no matter how perfect, 
 cannot solve the whole problem. They must 
 be supplemented by specially created oi)por- 
 tunities for work, and by unemployment in- 
 surance that will tide over the temporarily 
 idle workman. 
 
 II. CO-OEDINATION 
 
 Employment agencies have failed very 
 largely in this country because the outlook
 
 52 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 of their directors was too narrow or they 
 were hampered in the amount of money 
 placed at their disposal. No bureau can be 
 really efficient under present conditions un- 
 less it makes some effort to remove certain 
 underlying causes of unemplo}Tnent. For 
 unless this is done the agency will be 
 swamped with applicants, especially at cer- 
 tain seasons. 
 
 One of the measures necessary to relieve 
 unemployment is vocational education and 
 vocational guidance. The bureaus, of 
 course, cannot undertake this education. 
 Other departments of the State can best do 
 that. But industrial education is useless un- 
 less there is a wise ratio maintained between 
 the supply and the demand in a particular 
 sphere. For commercial schools to turn out 
 hundreds of stenographers and tj^ists when 
 only scores are needed in the business world 
 is a blunder that is not compensated for by
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 53 
 
 the efficiency of their training. They will 
 suffer as much as the inefficient. 
 
 A certain vocational guidance is, there- 
 fore, necessary if industrial education is to 
 be successful. And the employment bureau 
 is the logical source of such guidance. With 
 proper records, a close touch kept with the 
 business community, and a wide outlook 
 upon conditions, the bureau should be able 
 to advise wisely the individual and the de- 
 partment of education. Harmonious rela- 
 tions should be established between the em- 
 plojonent agency and the school board, and 
 individual pupils should be encouraged to 
 go to the bureau for consultation as to their 
 life-work. Such a correlation of govern- 
 ment departments would add immensely to 
 the efficiency of all. 
 
 But it is in the field of co-ordinating sea- 
 sonal occupations that the employment 
 agencies could do most to increase their ef-
 
 54. THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ficiency. Unfortunately, there are many in- 
 dustries that can work only a part of the 
 year. Agriculture, the most important of all 
 industries, is at the same time the obvious 
 example of part-time employment. The win- 
 ter is comparatively dull, then comes spring 
 with its ploughing and planting, summer 
 with its cultivation, and fall with its har- 
 vesting. Many more hands are needed in 
 spring and fall than in winter or summer. 
 What are they to do in between ? The build- 
 ing and garment trades, canning, logging are 
 all similarly affected. 
 
 Where the demands of a particular indus- 
 try, such as loading and unloading vessels, 
 varies from day to day, the number of men 
 required will vary. But the number of men 
 led to depend upon that industry is some- 
 times increased by the method of hiring be- 
 yond the total number ever employed on the 
 busiest day. If ten thousand men, say, are
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 55 
 
 employed regularly, and then at busy times 
 others taken on according to need, the total 
 number depending upon the industry would 
 be the greatest number ever used. But if 
 there is no nucleus regularly employed, each 
 man needed being hired by the day, a con- 
 stant variation in the force is introduced. 
 The ten thousand who are needed even on 
 dull days will not always be the same ten 
 thousand. The 260,000 working days a 
 month for such a force will be distributed, 
 perhaps, among thirteen thousand men, giv- 
 ing each five days a week rather than afford- 
 ing ten thousand full time. In this way a 
 larger number of men will be supported on 
 part-time wages than is really needed to do 
 the work. 
 
 There are two objects, therefore, at which 
 we should aim: (1) such a reorganization of 
 industry as will avoid as far as possible sea- 
 sonal fluctuations; and (2) such a co-ordina-
 
 56 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 tion of industries as will insure that the 
 slack season of one will correspond with the 
 brisk season of another. 
 
 Part of the seasonal fluctuations can be 
 handled only by a thorough education of the 
 consumers. An almost unanimous demand 
 for straw hats or winter clothes at a particu- 
 lar date may cause complications in the trade 
 that produce a severe hardship for the work- 
 ers. There is apt to be excessive overtime at 
 one season and part-time or unemployment 
 at another. As a nation we want things done 
 too quickly. The demand for rapid prosecu- 
 tion of some public building, for instance, 
 may mean the importation of thousands of 
 laborers who will be stranded when the job 
 is finished. From the standpoint of national 
 efficiency, it would be better to use the local 
 labor supply up to its limit for a longer time. 
 
 Emplojrment bureaus, it is true, cannot do 
 much directly to produce such results. They
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 57 
 
 can, however, furnish information that will 
 prove effective ammunition for others and 
 ultimately lead to legislation. For stringent 
 laws against overtime would force employ- 
 ers to a wiser planning of production. 
 
 But in the matter of co-ordinating indus- 
 tries, the employment bureaus should be able 
 to do much. With their knowledge of labor 
 conditions they can most wisely advise the 
 seasonally employed where they can get 
 work. More than this, however, being in 
 contact with employers they can frequently 
 suggest ways and means of limiting seasonal 
 fluctuations. It is probable that if a thor- 
 ough study of agricultural conditions were 
 made from this standpoint, a combination of 
 crops could be worked out for each section 
 that would materially lessen the present 
 variation in demand for labor. Sometimes, 
 too, by the combination of industries, a large 
 force can be profitably emjDloyed almost the
 
 58 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 whole year. A familiar example of this is 
 the coal and ice trade, so often found in 
 humorous proximity; but there are many 
 other applications, and employment bureaus 
 projDerly conducted ought to be able to point 
 them out. Thus in some of the country dis- 
 tricts of Germany bricklayers do butchering 
 during the winter when they cannot work at 
 their principal trade. 
 
 III. UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE 
 
 With the most perfect co-ordination pos- 
 sible, however, there will still be large num- 
 bers who will find themselves out of work. 
 And vdth the most efficient management pos- 
 sible of employment bureaus, it will often be 
 several days before they can secure other 
 positions. In the meantime, and before they 
 get paid in their new jobs, what are they to 
 do I If they have saved enough to tide them
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 59 
 
 over, well and good. But if they did not 
 have sufficient foresight, or strength of will, 
 or a high enough salary to save, what then ? 
 
 Heretofore, such persons have been left 
 dependent upon voluntary charity. But de- 
 spite previous failures, some far-seeing stu- 
 dents believe that the real solution to the 
 problem must come from social insurance. 
 (Cf. Eubinow, Social Insurance, N. Y., 
 1913.) Great Britain was the first nation to 
 make trial on any comprehensive scale of 
 compulsory social insurance for unemploy- 
 ment, but the war intervened before the plan 
 had been in operation long enough to prove 
 or disprove its practicability. 
 
 The British system required a contribu- 
 tion from the employer, the employee and 
 the State. In the case of low risk industries 
 or individuals, a rebate was allowed where 
 continuous employment could be proved. A 
 total of fifteen weeks was the limit for which
 
 60 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 assistance could be demanded in any one 
 year. 
 
 There are certain serious difficulties in the 
 way of successful unemployment insurance, 
 but they are not insuperable. At present, 
 with our defective statistics, the calculation 
 of the risk is impossible; but a system of 
 relative grants could be devised against ex- 
 ceptional conditions and as our statistics be- 
 came fuller we could perfect the regulations. 
 
 The chief difficulty is that the nature of 
 the risk evades definition. In the case of em- 
 ployers ' liability, old age, sickness or acci- 
 dent insurance, there are objective facts that 
 can be determined with sufficient certainty. 
 Malingering may be possible, but it can be 
 guarded against to a large extent. But when 
 it is a question of a man being out of work, 
 is the voluntarilj^ unemployed to be subsi- 
 dized as well as others 1 If not, how is he to 
 be distinguished?
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 61 
 
 Again, if professional loafers are ex- 
 cluded, what is to be done about the man who 
 voluntarily quits work on a strike ? The em- 
 ployers do not wish to contribute to a fund 
 that can be used against them if strikers are 
 to be paid from it, and workmen do not wish 
 to contribute if they are not to be paid. 
 
 Or if a man quits work for some personal 
 reason affecting him individually, is he to be 
 paid ? If it is on account of long hours, un- 
 sanitary conditions, and so on, it will affect 
 others, too; but should others be obliged to 
 contribute to a fund that will humor his 
 whim or personal dislike for his employer? 
 
 The answer seems to be that social insur- 
 ance is not a panacea. No one piece of legis- 
 lation, whether it be unemployment insur- 
 ance or anything else, can operate success- 
 fully by itself. There must be many mutu- 
 ally helpful institutions to make any one 
 attain efficiency.
 
 63 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 Hence in the case of unemployment insur- 
 ance, some system of arbitration would be 
 needed if strikers are to enjoy the benefits. 
 And to distinguish between the voluntarily 
 and the involuntarily unemployed, the 
 bureau would need some sort of work test. 
 If an applicant for insurance refused to 
 work for a private employer when the op- 
 portunity was offered him, he should forfeit 
 his right to insurance. Further, if he does 
 not obtain such employment within a reason- 
 able time, he should be sent to some govern- 
 ment institution where he can get work. For 
 the professional loafers there should be other 
 institutions furnishing the necessary dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 We are led, therefore, to the establishment 
 of governmental agencies to make work for 
 the willing and to force work from the un- 
 willing. These will be considered in the fol- 
 lowing chapters.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE state's duty TO THE UNEMPLOYABLE — 
 THE CAPABLE 
 
 WE have proceeded thus far in our ar- 
 gument : The laborer has a right to 
 work. But the duty corresponding to the 
 laborer's right to work cannot rest upon the 
 individual employer as such. It is useless 
 to urge upon employers, who have to cut ex- 
 penses as far as possible, to take on more 
 men. They simply cannot do it, and as a 
 consequence we cannot look to them for any 
 help in diminishing the number of unem- 
 ployed. Merel}^ individual efforts cannot 
 make this parable of the laborers in the 
 vineyard an anachronism. Unless the State 
 steps in to handle the situation, there will 
 
 63
 
 64 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 continue to be hundreds of thousands of men 
 of whom it may be asked, *'Why stand you 
 here all the day idle?" and always the an- 
 swer will be, ** Because no man hath hired 
 us." 
 
 Insurance against unemployment is one 
 way in which the State may deal with the 
 problem of unemplojrment. But it has many 
 serious defects. One drawback is that the 
 amount given per week (about $1.75 in Eng- 
 land) must inevitably be too small to buy 
 even the barest necessaries of life. And the 
 doling out of such pittances, even though 
 they did come partly from the enforced sav- 
 ings of the laborers themselves, would be ac- 
 companied by many of the demoralizing ef- 
 fects of charity. Those whose standard was 
 low would be inclined to rest content with 
 the pension and would not seek earnestly 
 enough for work. 
 
 More fundamental, however, is the objec-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 65 
 
 tion that this is an unproductive spending of 
 past accumulation, and so cannot be a real 
 solution of the problem. It does not touch 
 the heart of the question. The machinery is 
 simply changed a little from that now in use. 
 The fact remains that these unemployed 
 would still be a burden upon the employed. 
 Only the finding of productive employment 
 can be considered a satisfactory meeting of 
 the situation. Anything short of this is 
 merely patchwork. 
 
 The finding of such work can be done 
 partly by well-organized employment bu- 
 reaus. To bring the laborer and the job to- 
 gether, Federal, State and municipal em- 
 ployment bureaus can do something, but not 
 everything. Such institutions are powerless 
 to create work, and this is necessary. They 
 have their sphere of usefulness, but some- 
 thing more radical is needed. Even with the 
 most perfect employment bureaus in the
 
 66 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 world, the only information possible to give 
 many seekers would be that there was no 
 work for them. There would still be hun- 
 dreds of thousands of men standing all the 
 day idle because no man had hired them. 
 
 We do not know what percentage of the 
 whole that would be, but there are many in- 
 dications that it would be very large. Even 
 in Germany, the land of efficiency, employ- 
 ment bureaus (according to Peter Bonn, 
 Das Arheitshaus oJine Zwang, pp. 318ff. : 
 Hamm, Westf., 1911) can find work for only 
 about fifty per cent, of the applicants. And 
 this number should probably be materially 
 reduced by subtracting those who find only 
 temporary employment and who are soon 
 discharged for incompetence. 
 
 In the first two weeks of its existence, the 
 New York public employment bureau re- 
 ceived 6,232 applications for employment 
 and only 360 calls from employers. {Am.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 67 
 
 Labor Leg. Bev., Nov., 1915, p. 543.) The 
 postal experiment of the Federal authori- 
 ties in New York State, between April 22, 
 1915, and October 1, 1915, placed only 13,391 
 out of 49,544 applicants. Throughout the 
 whole country under the same experiment, 
 there were 125,643 applicants and 29,136 po- 
 sitions filled. (U. S. Bureau of Labor Sta- 
 tistics, Monthly Bulletin, Nov., 1916, p. 20.) 
 Such figures should be discounted, too, if 
 they are no more reliable than those of many 
 other employment agencies. Thus a com- 
 mittee of the Massachusetts Legislature 
 found that out of 500 men reported placed 
 by a Boston bureau only 180 had actually 
 received jobs, and only 25 obtained work for 
 more than three months. (Margaret Nash, 
 "Municipal Employment Bureaus," in Na- 
 tional Municipal Bevietv, July, 1915, p. 433, 
 quoting pp. 74-76 of the Committee's 
 Report.)
 
 68 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 Competitive, privately conducted indus- 
 try, therefore, will not employ all our work- 
 men. But this much is certain, that if a na- 
 tion cannot set its idle hands to work it is 
 not efficiently organized. It used to be 
 thought that there was only a certain amount 
 of work to be done, and that therefore it was 
 a good thing from the laborer's standpoint 
 to loaf on a job in order to make it last 
 longer. But there is really much more work 
 than will ever be accomplished. 
 
 If we take first the simple case of a fam- 
 ily, we shall understand the situation better. 
 A housewife's work is never done. There is 
 always something else to do, and she can al- 
 ways advantageously put idle hands to work 
 rather than give them food while they do 
 nothing. Government is only large house- 
 keeping. The size of the operations compli- 
 cates matters but does not essentially alter 
 them. It is always better for society to put
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 69 
 
 men to work than to feed them in idleness. 
 
 Or, again, take the case of a religious com- 
 munity. Whoever heard of there not being 
 enough work to go round? Why, even the 
 largest of them, running up into the scores 
 of thousands, are continually crying for 
 more recruits. Their trouble is too much 
 work, not too little. The fields are white 
 unto harvest, but the laborers are few. We 
 do not need to pray for harvest and for work, 
 but for some system whereby we can utilize 
 all the laborers we have. 
 
 A fact that seems to be overlooked in much 
 talk upon this subject is that these idle men 
 are actually being supported now. It is true, 
 they are not getting enough to maintain a 
 decent standard for a self-respecting work- 
 man, but they are getting enough food and 
 clothing and shelter to keep body and soul 
 together. Whence does it come ? Not from 
 their own efforts, for they are doing nothing,
 
 70 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 and in the majority of cases their savings 
 are exhausted. It must come, therefore, 
 from the product of those who are still work- 
 ing. Now if this were taken in the way of 
 taxes and used to give these men employ- 
 ment, they would make some return to the 
 State, be kept self-respecting, and could 
 reach a higher standard. 
 
 It may be said that the taxes would fall 
 mainly upon the poor people, whereas the 
 charitable funds from which they are at 
 present helped come chiefly from the 
 wealthy. But as a matter of fact it is prin- 
 cipally the poor who help the poor. The 
 struggling corner-groceryman, the fellow 
 laborer, the friend only less poor than the 
 idle, are now the chief contributors, and they 
 are at present giving more than they would 
 give in taxes under the system advocated. 
 
 That this giving of work by the State is 
 the real solution of the problem is being
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 71 
 
 more and more clearly recognized by ad- 
 vanced social workers. Tims the Chicago 
 Municipal Markets Commission recom- 
 mended that public works and improve- 
 ments should be opened up during the slack 
 seasons of private enterprise, and that work 
 should be created for the unemployed by 
 public and private industry. (Journal of 
 Criminal Law and Criminology, July, 1915, 
 p. 299.) 
 
 Idaho has shown its recognition of the 
 right to work by providing sixty days ' public 
 work for all citizens who cannot find other 
 employment. {Am. Lab. Leg. Rev., Dec, 
 1915, p. 763.) This is pitifully inadequate, 
 but it is encouraging as indicating the trend 
 of thought. It exhibits a growing sense of 
 the meaning and importance of this problem 
 of unemployment. The constitutionality of 
 the law is being tested, but while the move- 
 ment can be retarded by an adverse decision
 
 72 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 it cannot be killed. One generation of 
 judges declared unconstitutional all regula- 
 tion of the labor of women and children, only 
 to have another generation reverse its ruling. 
 
 When the constructive statesman under- 
 takes to furnish this work, however, he finds 
 that he is dealing with two essentially dis- 
 tinct classes of men. 
 
 One class is self-respecting, honest and in- 
 dustrious. The men who form it could be 
 profitably employed in private industry if 
 there were only a place for them. That is to 
 say, they are individually about as efficient 
 as the men who are actually employed. If 
 the skill of the entrepreneur class increased 
 they would be taken on. 
 
 The other class is more or less completely 
 down and out. Its members have some de- 
 fect that renders them useless to the private 
 employer. They drink, perhaps, or are so 
 lazy that it would take more in foremen's
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 73 
 
 wages to make them work than they are 
 worth, or they are dishonest, or quarrel- 
 some. Sometimes they have the wanderlust, 
 because they have acquired the habit from 
 being forced from one place to another in 
 search of work. Whether their defects are 
 curable or not, they cannot be used in com- 
 petitive industry. They are discards thrown 
 on the scrap heap to rust out instead of wear- 
 ing out. 
 
 Evidently the method of dealing with each 
 class must be different. It is so radically 
 different that the discussion of the second 
 class will be postponed to another chapter. 
 Now we take up the question as to what 
 should be done by the governmental agencies 
 to create work for the self-respecting, capa- 
 ble unemployed. 
 
 Tlie first problem that presents itself in 
 this connection is : what kind of work should 
 be given I Should a watch-maker be set to
 
 74 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 making watches, should a clerk keep books, 
 and so on ? Or are all to be given the same 
 kind of work? Does a man's right to work 
 imply a right to the kind of work in which 
 he has specialized ? 
 
 It would be useless for any government to 
 attempt giving each man his own special 
 kind of work unless it were frankly and 
 whole-heartedly to adopt Socialism. Per- 
 haps even then it could not be done. But the 
 right to work does not imply a right to such 
 special work. For it is based upon the right 
 to earn one's living, and if this opportunity 
 is given in one way rather than another, the 
 State has nevertheless fulfilled its duty in 
 legal justice. 
 
 In fact, for any one who realizes the in- 
 estimable value of personal ambition as fos- 
 tered by a competitive organization of in- 
 dustry, it is evident that the work given by 
 the government should have certain draw-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 76 
 
 backs to it that would force the self-respect- 
 ing workman back into the industrial strug- 
 gle. But if he could be sure of a permanent 
 job in his line of work with as good pay as 
 he could get with a private concern, he would 
 want to stay on with the government. 
 
 Perhaps the fact of making this govern- 
 ment work of the simplest kind and largely 
 uniform for all will be sufficient spur to 
 drive men back into competition. If not, 
 then other means must be devised. 
 
 Just what that work should be — building 
 roads, draining swamps, dredging rivers — 
 is a question of detail. It would take much 
 thought and long experimenting and many 
 failures to work out a comprehensive scheme 
 whereby governmental activities would 
 automatically increase in slack seasons and 
 times of industrial depression, and decrease 
 as private business picked up. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the municipality, the State
 
 76 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 •and the national government should each 
 share in the responsibility. But in what pro- 
 portion? And should one supervise the 
 work, being subsidized by the others, or 
 should each one do its own work? And if 
 one is to do it, should it be the town, State, or 
 Federal government? 
 
 These are difficult questions, but they 
 would probably be answered very quickly if 
 the effort were once made to cope with the 
 situation. With present ■ knowledge, how- 
 ever, it would seem that certain large under- 
 takings that can be accomplished only by the 
 national government and which require 
 large quantities of unskilled labor might 
 wisely be done in this way. There are proj- 
 ects that could be planned ahead and carried 
 out just as the labor market fluctuated. 
 
 But as this work would be restricted to 
 certain localities and transportation would 
 be expensive, a more localized treatment is
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 77 
 
 desirable under normal conditions. Each 
 township, therefore, should have some sort 
 of simple work to which men could be put 
 when they could find nothing else to do. This 
 might take the form of opening streets, 
 cleaning vacant lots, or other general and 
 necessary works of municipal improvement. 
 Perhaps the simplest work would be the cut- 
 ting of firewood or the breaking of stones. 
 The latter, particularly, is especially suited 
 to this variable supply of labor. It requires 
 practically no outlay for tools or materials, 
 it does not suffer from interruption, and 
 each man's work is independent of every 
 other man's. What each man does is easily 
 measured ; if he ** soldiers" he injures no one 
 but himself. 
 
 The question of providing for women is 
 harder. Perhaps plain sewing is the best 
 solution. This requires either a shop and 
 forewoman or the distribution of work in
 
 78 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 the homes. And as the remuneration for 
 such work is at starvation rates now, the 
 State would be ahnost compelled to pay more 
 than the current wages. But if it paid more, 
 how could it induce these women to go back 
 into the competitive field? Undoubtedly 
 stringent minimum wage laws regulating 
 compensation in private industry would be 
 necessary to make this part of the scheme 
 effective. 
 
 Whenever men or women apply for work 
 or assistance, one should be able to refer 
 them promptly to such a municipal under- 
 taking with the certain knowledge that they 
 will be adequately taken care of. For 
 such work would undoubtedly take up what 
 may be called the normally unemployed. 
 
 During special times of depression these 
 measures should be supplemented by State 
 road-building or other undertakings, and 
 finally by national work. These, however,
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 79 
 
 should be last resorts, and would be neces- 
 sary only in times of national crises. 
 
 The question of pay is an important one. 
 If the men given work in this way are paid 
 just as much as they would get in private 
 undertakings, will they not stay on with the 
 government? And if they do stay on, will 
 not the same causes that operated in the in- 
 dustrial world to produce this fringe of un- 
 employed produce another reserve supply of 
 labor, so that conditions will not be materi- 
 ally improved ? 
 
 If such a tendency were observed in any 
 marked degree, then wages should probably 
 be reduced slightly below competitive levels 
 (we assume that minimum wage laws go 
 hand in hand with the specific legislation we 
 are advocating), either by lowering the rate 
 or limiting the employment given to part 
 time. This latter would be easy in municipal 
 undertakings. It would probably be the bet-
 
 80 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ter plan, as it would allow an opportunity 
 for seeking jobs competitively. 
 
 Again, it may be asked, would not tbe gov- 
 ernment be competing with private under- 
 takings and making industrial conditions 
 harder? There are two reasons why this 
 would not be so. 'First, the governniient 
 would be doing work in a field where it al- 
 ready had a monopoly, as road-building, or 
 where it might very wisely be given one, as 
 in breaking stone. 
 
 The second reason is that the removal of 
 such a supply of labor from the industrial 
 world would tend to raise wages. Employ- 
 ers now have power to depress wages be- 
 cause they know that if the laborer refuses 
 work at the wages offered he can probably 
 get nothing else to do, and there will be an- 
 other who will accept what was offered to 
 the first one. Laborers are competing to get 
 jobs, but employers are not competing to get
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 81 
 
 laborers. Anything, therefore, that tends to 
 increase the demand for labor and reduce 
 the supply, as the creation of work by the 
 government, would raise wages in the com- 
 petitive sphere. 
 
 Hence in three ways this policy of making 
 work would help the laboring classes: it 
 would relieve them of much of the burden of 
 supporting the unemployed; it would in- 
 crease the security of their employment ; and 
 it would tend to raise their wages. 
 
 What has been done along these lines by 
 municipalities will be found in the survey of 
 the American Association for Labor Legis- 
 lation. (Am, Lab. Leg. Rev., Nov., 1915.) 
 It is an encouraging beginning, but it is only 
 a beginning. Much remains to be done. 
 Courage and faith are necessary to face the 
 inevitable difficulties and criticism and dis- 
 couragements.
 
 CHAPTER Y 
 
 THE state's duty TO THE UNEMPLOYABLE — 
 THE INCAPABLE 
 
 THE question cf securing employment 
 for men who are able and willing to 
 work, however, is only one phase of the prob- 
 lem. There is also a vast army of men who 
 are unemployable under such simple condi- 
 tions as we have so far assumed. It will do 
 no good to find them jobs in the industrial 
 world because they cannot keep them. They 
 are defective in some way that makes their( 
 employment unprofitable. 
 
 A few years ago a young fellow came to 
 me seeking help. He had been living in a 
 bi^ Eastern city, but had pulled out to get 
 away from evil companions. For some 
 
 82
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 83 
 
 years he had been drinking heavily, yet 
 he was willing to break with home and 
 friends in an effort to do better. It was a 
 great sacrifice for him and shows that he was 
 really earnest in trying to reform. 
 
 An important railroad in the city where I 
 then was happened to be conducting a sort 
 of philanthropic scrap-yard to help absorb 
 the surplus labor, so he got a job there. To 
 relieve him of his temptations as far as pos- 
 sible, I made arrangements to draw his pay 
 and to meet all his expenses so that he should 
 not have the handling of money. He went to 
 work on Friday. Monday night he came to 
 me drunk. To get liquor, he had played a 
 piano and sung in a saloon. Naturally he 
 lost that job — the one in the scrap-yard. 
 
 For a week or so he half starved. Then I 
 managed to get him employment in a lunch 
 room. He worked six days. At the end of 
 that time the proprietor asked him to black
 
 84 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 his shoes for him. ^*I'll black your eyes 
 first," was the answer. 
 
 The next place he found work was in a 
 hospital. In about two months he went on 
 five or more sprees. Though the Sisters 
 were most kind to him, they were finally 
 obliged to discharge him. Whereupon he 
 sold his clothes and everything else he had 
 that was marketable to buy liquor, and cele- 
 brated with a "glorious" debauch. 
 
 It is useless to get such a man a job. An 
 employment bureau or a charitable agency 
 that sends such men to its clients will simply 
 hurt a deserving man's chances of getting a 
 position on their recommendation. ~ And 
 while this is only one case, it is typical of a 
 very large number of those out of work. We 
 do not know what percentage of the unem- 
 ployed belong with these unemployables, 
 but it is probably fifty per cent. Certainly 
 any one who has had experience in charitable
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 85 
 
 work can tell of hundreds of cases duplicat- 
 ing this one in all essentials. 
 
 These men are not necessarily physically 
 unfit. Many of them are perfectly strong in 
 body. Their muscles are able to stand hard 
 work. But there is a defect somewhere that 
 renders them unemployable. 
 
 This unfitness manifests itself in many 
 ways. One is an uncontrollable desire for 
 liquor. They will not, perhaps cannot, keep 
 away from it. Sometimes they will go for 
 weeks or months without touching a drop, 
 and then at a crucial moment when they 
 should be steadier than ever, because their 
 responsibilities are greater, they take a glass 
 or two to brace them up, and of course in- 
 stead of being braced up they and their re- 
 solves collapse. Industries can 't be run with 
 such people, and soon they find themselves 
 out of work. Out of two thousand men given 
 medical attention at the New York Munici-
 
 86 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 pal Lodging House, 39 per cent, were found 
 to be suffering from alcoholism. (American 
 Labor Legislation Review, November, 1915, 
 p. 608.) 
 
 Or it may be a certain quarrelsome nature 
 or suspicious disposition that makes it im- 
 possible for others to get along with them. 
 They are continually taking offense, or 
 scenting injustice, or complaining of favor- 
 itism. At any rate, they are not the sort of 
 people you want about your store or factory. 
 They drive away customers and demoralize 
 their fellow employees. If ''it's the voice 
 with a smile ' ' that wins out in a telephone ex- 
 change, it's the man with a grouch that loses 
 there and elsewhere. 
 
 Again, it may be a disposition to "soldier. " 
 Through long years of drifting they have ac- 
 quired ineradicable habits of laziness. To 
 make them work would require a special 
 foreman to stand over them every minute.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 87 
 
 Or they are always late in getting to work in 
 the morning. Lacking in ambition, they 
 cannot be reached. A threat of discharge 
 has no force. The only thing to do is to 
 *'fire" them before they demoralize the 
 other employees. 
 
 Others have caught the wanderlust. They 
 pass from one job to another, from one city 
 to another, even from one continent to an- 
 other. After a month or so, they leave — not 
 to go to a better job, but simply because a 
 few weeks in one place is all they can stand. 
 There is a great deal of wisdom in the old 
 saying, *^A rolling stone gathers no moss." 
 And it is not controverted by the query, 
 * * But who wants to gather moss ? " If a man 
 is to be an efficient social being, he must 
 gather moss in the sense of storing up good, 
 steady habits, accumulating capital and be- 
 ing able to support himself decently. Those 
 who don't are undesirable citizens, chron-
 
 88 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 ically out of work because they are unem- 
 ployable. 
 
 Most of these men profess to be willing to 
 work and actually will work for a short time. 
 But quite a number of others are profes- 
 sional loafers. Thej^ will not even start at a 
 job. They are determined parasites who live 
 by begging from soft-hearted people. 
 
 In addition to these moral defectives — for 
 temperance, industry, and stability are 
 moral qualities — there are some who are 
 physically unfit. Probably about ten per 
 cent, of the idle can do no work, and about 
 ten per cent, more are capable only of light 
 work. (Cf. Am. Lab. Leg. Rev., Nov., 1915, 
 p. 606.) Of these, some are mentally handi- 
 capped, either by congenital or acquired de- 
 fects, some are sickly and some are de- 
 formed. 
 
 The causes operating to produce these de- 
 fects in unemployables are partly individual
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 89 
 
 and partly social. Some of them can be 
 eliminated and some cannot, but every effort 
 should be made to reduce them as far as 
 possible. 
 
 The saloons, of course, are among the most 
 fertile causes of unemployableness. But 
 they are as frequently, perhaps, a symptom 
 as a cause. If the taste were not developed 
 by vicious companions, overwork, worry, 
 perhaps heredity, they would not flourish to 
 the same extent. 
 
 These and all other morally defective un- 
 employables can be guarded against or 
 helped by all institutions that make for char- 
 acter-building. Schools, churches, and all 
 other moral agencies should face the prob- 
 lem and work towards its solution under the 
 encouragement of the government. 
 
 Sometimes long seasons of unemployment 
 make a man a chronic loafer. Men quickly 
 lose the habit of work. One who has spent
 
 90 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 several seasons wandering from place to 
 place becomes unfit for steady occupation. 
 The supply of such men would be stopped by 
 taking care of unemploj^ment and under-em- 
 ployment as suggested. Industries operat- 
 ing only a part of the year, "blind-alley" 
 trades, casual jobs, lack of industrial educa- 
 tion, are all partly responsible, and should 
 be done away with as quickly and as far as 
 possible. Trade schools, vocational guid- 
 ance, co-ordination of industries — all this 
 would help considerably. 
 
 Other unemployables are ground out by 
 our industrial system that overworks and 
 underpays its employees and then scraps 
 them for society to care for. This must be 
 remedied by proper hours and wages, good 
 sanitary conditions, and preventive meas- 
 ures against occupational diseases. A devel- 
 opment of preventive medicine will go far 
 towards decreasing this class.
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 91 
 
 But even after everytlimg possible has 
 been done along these lines, we shall still 
 have scores of thousands of unemployables. 
 Man is endowed with free will and the mil- 
 lennium will not come in our day. With all 
 the safeguards that the State and other 
 agencies can provide, there will still be im- 
 proper homes turning out worthless chil- 
 dren. There will be diseased fathers and 
 mothers transmitting blindness or imbecil- 
 ity or weak nervous systems to the offspring 
 they were unworthy to have. And if we had 
 the most drastic eugenic legislation possible, 
 there would yet be children from good homes 
 perversely choosing the worse way. 
 
 Preventive philanthropy is good. It is 
 wise to get down to the roots of the social 
 weeds in order to destroy them altogether, 
 instead of contenting ourselves with cutting 
 off the tops, knowing that for every one we 
 cut another will grow. But in this case we
 
 92 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 cannot entirely destroy the roots, and there 
 will always be large numbers of unem- 
 ployables. What, then, are we to do to take 
 care of them? How are we to keep them 
 from demoralizing the whole industrial sys- 
 tem, as at present? 
 
 First must come the clear conception that 
 it is a question of unemploydbleness, and not 
 merely one of unemployment. We must 
 recognize that it is useless to find ordinary 
 jobs for these men, because on account of 
 one or other of the defects mentioned, they 
 are round pegs that cannot fit into the square 
 holes of steady competitive industry. Their 
 unemployment is merely a symptom, a result 
 of their unemployableness. To be effective, 
 any remedy must treat them as a class apart. 
 Special conditions must be created in which 
 they can be employed, just as special condi- 
 tions are created for the blind. 
 
 The State should provide special institu-
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 93 
 
 tions where such persons can be employed 
 up to their full capacity, whatever that may 
 be. It is better for all concerned that they 
 should be so occupied. They will be less of 
 a drag upon the community, they will have 
 less opportunity to demoralize industrial 
 conditions, they will be happier, and some of 
 them will grow out of this class and be able 
 to go back into the competitive fight with 
 self-respect regained. They are being sup- 
 ported now without making any contribution 
 to the funds of society. Why not devise 
 some means whereby they will be made at 
 least partially self-supporting ? 
 
 There should be State farms and factories 
 to which those who have proved themselves 
 unemployable in ordinary competitive in- 
 dustry may be committed. A great many of 
 those who are now living on charity could 
 be made self-supporting if they had the 
 proper discipline. They are not criminals.
 
 94 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 nor are they so defective mentally as to be 
 feeble-minded. But they are lacking in cer- 
 tain essential requirements for competitive 
 industry, and therefore they should be sep- 
 arated into a class by themselves, apart from 
 criminals, apart from imbeciles, apart from 
 the perfectly capable. Their own good and 
 the good of society demands this just as 
 much in their case as in that of the insane 
 or vicious, though there should be no 
 stigma attaching to these institutions as to 
 the ordinary workhouse, their function be- 
 ing educative, not punitive. If necessary, 
 the merely lazy, or surly, or wandering 
 might be separated from the drunkards. 
 They can be cured more easily, perhaps, and 
 once cured should be free to go back into the 
 world to earn their living. 
 
 The recommendation of St. Paul, that 
 those who will not work should not eat, 
 should be rigidly enforced. Vagrants and
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 95 
 
 beggars should disappear from our streets. 
 Those who can work should be made to work 
 in these institutions, and those who are in- 
 capable of working should be suppoited by 
 charit}^ grants. 
 
 Such institutions are not entirely experi- 
 mental. In 1910, New York provided for a 
 Farm Colony for Inebriates, and a year 
 later for a Farm Colony for Tramps and 
 Vagrants. Wonderful progress, too, has 
 been made in the care of one special class of 
 defectives — the feeble-minded. 
 
 Besides this, however, for several centu- 
 ries we have had institutions for woiuen that 
 demonstrate the possibility of such work. 
 Scattered all over this country are homes 
 conducted by the Good Shepherd Sisters for 
 the purpose of bringing back to ways of self- 
 respect delinquent girls and women. There 
 is a widespread conviction that it is impossi- 
 ble to reform these women. It is hard, but
 
 96 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 it is not impossible, as these Sisters have 
 shown. 
 
 The visitor to one of these institutions 
 finds an air of peace and quiet and content- 
 ment, a genuine spirit of the Good Shep- 
 herd, that is in wonderful contrast to the life 
 the former companions of these women are 
 leading a few blocks away — women who can- 
 not hide the misery of their lives though they 
 paint an inch thick and laugh from ear to 
 ear. 
 
 What has wrought this change in women 
 who were unemployable except in the world 
 of vice ? What has made them self-respect- 
 ing and largely self-supporting? Partly 
 the example of wonderful sacrifice and de- 
 votion exhibited by so many good, pure 
 women consecrating their lives to these for- 
 mer outcasts, and doing it not for a salary, 
 not to be talked about in philanthropic cir- 
 cles, but for the love of Christ; partly it is
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 97 
 
 the blessing of regular work, each duty be- 
 gun and ended with the precision of clock- 
 work ; partly it is the effect of physical clean- 
 liness, fresh air and good food in quieting 
 nerves and allaying the fever of excitement ; 
 but above all, it is the effect of prayer and 
 the Sacraments. Each morning an hour is 
 spent in silent communion with God, and at 
 appointed intervals during the day the soul 
 is brought back to a sense of God's presence. 
 That contact with unseen power gives a 
 strength that no merely ethical consideration 
 can hope to rival. 
 
 Why cannot we have some such homes 
 for men who are otherwise unemployable? 
 Why is there not some place where we can 
 send the drunken, demoralized man as we 
 can send these women? Why is there not 
 a brotherhood conducting Good Shepherd 
 homes for men ? 
 
 There are to-day walking the streets of
 
 98 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 our big cities thousands of men who would 
 develop into self-respecting citizens if they 
 only had some such chance. I have had men 
 come to me who knew that they could not of 
 themselves keep away from liquor, and ask to 
 be put in such an institution. Others would 
 have to be committed by legal authority. But 
 whether admitted or committed, in the ma- 
 jority of cases they would not fail to profit. 
 Give them a religious atmosphere, certain 
 religious exercises, steady employment, and 
 they will brace up wonderfully. If fallen 
 women can be reclaimed, so can fallen men ; 
 and the percentage saved would probably 
 be higher among men than women. 
 
 Religion and regularity would be their sal- 
 vation, as it has been the salvation of so 
 many women. Alone they can attain to nei- 
 ther; in an institution with the moral force 
 of custom and numbers they could get both. 
 It is a great deal easier for a man with a
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 99 
 
 flabby will to rise at five o'clock when two 
 hundred others do it with him, than when 
 he is by himself ; it is easy for a man to go 
 to Mass every morning when the chapel is 
 in the same building and all attend. Yet 
 all these practices will have a tremendous in- 
 fluence in bringing about a change from old, 
 demoralizing habits. Put the worst drunk- 
 ard in the world in an institution where 
 saintly men are serving him for God's sake, 
 and where he sees hundreds, who were once 
 as bad as he was, now leading simple, ab- 
 stemious, prayerful, regular lives, and he 
 will inevitably be affected for good; if he 
 be not the worst drunkard, but only lazy, he 
 will respond wonderfully, provided he have 
 half a will to reform. 
 
 But the physical side would not be neg- 
 lected. Early rising, personal cleanliness, 
 wholesome food at regular intervals, would 
 contribute their share towards rehabilitating
 
 100 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 these derelicts. By constant repetition for 
 months or years these actions would become 
 habitual, just as their former evil customs 
 had become so. Every good action deliber- 
 ately willed would weaken the hold of the 
 bad habit. And the weakening would be by 
 a force equivalent in its proportion to the 
 number and intensity of the evil actions pro- 
 ducing the habit. When the good actions 
 equalled the bad actions in number and in- 
 tensity, the evil habit would have been de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 There are innumerable institutions where 
 those who can afford it are paying high 
 prices to be cured of drunkenness. This re- 
 ligious institution would be worth them all 
 in dealing with the drink habit and all other 
 moral defects that go to make men unem- 
 ployable. To feel that they are consecrating 
 themselves to God, that they are atoning for 
 their sins, that they are really drawing close
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 101 
 
 to the Saviour of the world, would have more 
 effect in reforming their lives than all the 
 drugs in creation. 
 
 It is possible that the State might accom- 
 plish a great deal without this religious ele- 
 ment. But there is no good reason for fore- 
 going it. The State is now subsidizing simi- 
 lar institutions or directly employing sister- 
 hoods to conduct them. Why not, then, util- 
 ize this powerful religious motive in dealing 
 with a problem that requires aU the forces 
 possible to attain a real success? 
 
 We should, then, recognize that of those 
 out of work a large percentage have physical 
 or moral defects that make them unemploy- 
 able. Therefore work should be provided 
 for them in special governmental institu- 
 tions, where the very best methods will be 
 employed to make them self-respecting and 
 self-supporting. 
 
 UHIVERSHY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DUTY OF THE Iin)iyH)UAL 
 
 EVERY man, then, has a right to the op- 
 portunity to work. And the correlative 
 duty of furnishing this opportunity, under 
 a wage regime, falls upon the State. This 
 implies emplojnnent bureaus, correlation 
 of industries and compulsory insurance for 
 those who are temporarily out of work. 
 Those who are permanently unemployed, 
 whether competent or incompetent, should 
 be furnished work by the State according to 
 their capacities. 
 
 But while the individual has no direct 
 duty to furnish work for the unemployed, is 
 he therefore entirely absolved from all ob- 
 ligation? There is a tendency, I know, to 
 
 102
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 103 
 
 imagine that the individual has no responsi- 
 bility for what the State does. To hang an 
 obligation on this anonymous hook is to get 
 rid of it altogether. However, is such an 
 attitude justified ? 
 
 Perhaps in a rigid autocracy, the individ- 
 ual citizen may salve his conscience by 
 throwing all the odium upon the govern- 
 ment. But in a republic matters are differ- 
 ent. No such Pilate-washing of the hands 
 will absolve the voters. For the State will 
 act as the voters dictate, and each one can 
 say, **I am the State." He is not the whole 
 State, but he is a part of it, and to that 
 extent he becomes responsible for the State's 
 action. 
 
 Of course, each citizen is not the equal of 
 every other. While no one has more than 
 one direct vote, some have more influence 
 and power than others. In proportion to 
 his power he will be judged. In private con-
 
 104 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 versation, with tongue or pen, or in any 
 other way possible to him, he must endeavor 
 to bring about the fulfilment of this duty 
 to the unemployed. A perpetual passing on 
 of the duty will get nowhere. Each man is 
 his brother's keeper, and the duty of the 
 keeping cannot be shifted to the world at 
 large. 
 
 Unemployment is sapping the strength 
 and undermining the efficiency of several 
 millions of our fellow citizens. Mere indi- 
 vidual efforts at finding emplojrment or dis- 
 pensing charity are futile or worse. Even 
 State activity in the form of insurance and 
 employment bureaus will never really get 
 down to the root of the matter. There must 
 be national provision of the opportunity to 
 work. And in this action of the nation we 
 must share. Each in his own measure must 
 help on the formation of the public opinion 
 necessary for such action, so that some day
 
 THE RIGHT TO WORK 105 
 
 there will be no men standing here all the 
 day idle because no man hath hired them. 
 
 We have heard much about the develop- 
 ment of water power and mineral deposits. 
 Capital and engineering skill have been lav- 
 ished upon projects to harness the forces of 
 nature and to utilize her resources to the 
 utmost. Men have burrowed into the bowels 
 of the earth, and now more or less like eagles 
 they are invading the empyrean. 
 
 So eagerly and feverishly did men attack 
 this conquest of nature that a halt had to be 
 called. Talk of development gave way to 
 some extent to talk of conservation. A dis- 
 tinction was recognized between waste and 
 use. Not a moment too soon far-seeing 
 statesmen forced a consideration of pos- 
 terity. 
 
 When are we going to understand that the 
 noblest and most important task for any 
 Jiation is the development and the conserva-
 
 106 THE RIGHT TO WORK 
 
 tion of its human energy ? Great inventions 
 of engines and automobiles, the digging of 
 canals, the harnessing of waterfalls, the 
 careful utilization of all formerly waste 
 products, of every particle of matter down 
 to the hairs in pigs' ears, are a condemnation 
 of a nation that allows its flesh-and-blood en- 
 gines, its human dynamos, its living powers, 
 to stand idly rusting out an existence un- 
 worthy of men. 
 
 We need a movement that will utilize all 
 the muscles and brains we have, that will de- 
 velop our manhood to its full capacity, that 
 will make it a crime to have men standing 
 all the day idle because society cannot put 
 their hands to work. In the vineyard of the 
 future there will be work for all — whole- 
 some, dignified, soul-building work. 
 
 UHlVERSllY OF SOUJIIUIU CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
 
 "Life is too short for reading inferior books," — Bryce 
 
 Clean literature and clean womanhood are 
 the keystones of civilization — and 
 
 MY 
 UNKNOWN CHUM 
 
 ("AGUECHEEK") 
 Foreword by HENRY GARRITY 
 
 "is the cleanest and best all-round book in 
 the English Language" 
 
 "An Ideal Chum." You will read it often and like it better 
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 a new light that has nought to do with the horrors of war. 
 It fulfills to the letter Lord Rosebery's definition of the 
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 Literature, Recreation." 
 
 Uliat critical book-lovers say: 
 
 SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK, Chief Justice of Canada: "'My Unknown 
 Chum' is a wonderful book. I can repeat some of the pages almost by 
 heart. I buy it to give to those I love and to friends who can appreciate 
 a good book. " 
 
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 charming. " 
 
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 UNKNOWN CHUM the best of comrades all through 
 life. Preachy? Not a bit of it! He is a delightful chum 
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 scandals, domestic wreckage and divorce. 
 
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 "I love books. I love my library, in which are more than three hundred 
 of the world's best works. If driven by adversity to a hall bedroom, I 
 could select five books that would supply me with delightful reading matter 
 for the remainder of my days — the first would be 'My Unknown Chum.' " 
 
 CARDINAL GASQUET, the world's foremost scholar: 
 
 "I have read 'My Unknown Chum' with the preatest possible pleasure." 
 
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 " 'My Unknown Chiun' — I cannot too strongly erpress the pleasure 
 and companionship I fotind in this excellent book. It is all that is claimed 
 for it — even more. It is not only a companion, but a friend." 
 
 ALICE M. BRADLEY, author of the Belasco production— 
 "The Governor's Lady": 
 
 "The title, 'My Unknown Chum,' most aptly describes the book. It is 
 a chum, a confidant, with old-time manners and all-time observation and 
 philosophy. He takes you with him and delights you. What delicious 
 humor!" 
 
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 classes — -has a remarkable sale. We sell more copies than we do of many 
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 CONSUMERS MS 
 WAGE EARNERS 
 
 The Ethics of Buying Cheap 
 By J. ELLIOT ROSS, Ph.D. 
 
 An exposure of the vice-compelling unjust wages of 
 these troublous times — and a solution. This is a book 
 that should be read by every buyer, every seller, every 
 consumer and every wage earner. It should he studied 
 carefully by fathers and mothers who have children that 
 must work. 
 
 THESE VITAL PROBLEMS 
 ARE ANALYZED: 
 
 Obligations of the Consuming Class 
 
 What Should the Individual Consumer Do? 
 
 What Is a Just Employer? 
 
 Theory of Industrial Organization 
 
 Industrial Conditions — Wages, Health, Morals 
 
 Price Sl.OO net— $1,15 Postpaid 
 
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 PUBLISHERS
 
 Ready Soon! 
 
 INNOCENCE 
 
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 IGNORANCE 
 
 BY 
 
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 AND 
 
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 PUBLISHERS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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