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In reply to the objections of many modern manufacturers that a particular industry will be ruined if children cannot be employed, we may point to the prosperity of the cotton industry in England and such industries as glass-making in the United States, which appear to thrive in proportion as child labor has been dispensed with. (131) But if some check to certain industries were involved in the strict limitation of child labor, it must be questioned whether the service to society is not after all worth the cost. If a particular industry does not justify the employment of adults at a living wage under decent conditions, the community would suffer little from the loss of it, as compared with the destruction of character and physique involved in parasitic labor. The time is certainly not far off when we shall demand and enforce by effective legislation, that every industry shall bear the full cost of legitimate production. We cannot afford, says McKelway, to put colts to the plough.

A study of the labor of adult women has disclosed a similar tendency to deterioration of health and capacity as the result of inadequate wage, long, irregular hours of labor, and exposure to physical and social hardships. But since space is lacking to consider all the social tendencies toward degeneration, we must turn to a phase of employment affecting most injuriously wage-earners of both sexes and all ages in a great number of industries. Intermittent, irregular labor may arise from seasonal variations, or from the spasmodic nature of modern industry, or from the inclination of employing companies, as in the bituminous coal regions and the meat-packing industries, to keep a large number of men partially employed rather than a small number occupied all the time. Of the same nature is the unemployment from industrial crises, which leave behind a legacy of individual degeneration and personal unthrift.

TABLE XXXIII.
Applicants for relief and industrial displacement (1895-1896).

In a study of industrial displacement made by Francis H. McLean from the records of the New York Charity Organization Society, the different classes are shown as in Table XXXIII. From further information it appears that 40 per cent of these men were only irregularly employed even when they last had employment. (132)

But if it be thought that such statistics as these overstate the proportions of uncertain employment, we have only to rehearse the facts of seasonal unemployment in New York City in 1905 to see how serious the situation is even in prosperous years. Mr. Frank J. Warne writes as follows: --

"The seasonal nature of unemployment is indicated in the fact that of the 365,000 members of trade unions reporting to the New York State Bureau of Labor in 1905, as many as 32,000, or 8.7 per cent, were idle in the January-March period, while for July-September only 7500, or but 2 per cent, were out of work. The report of the State Bureau of Labor shows that for the four years since 1901 as many as 20 to 25 per cent of the membership of the labor unions have been idle in January. The year 1905 was an exceptionally favorable one for employment at this season (March), and yet among brick-layers and masons 43 per cent were idle, carpenters and joiners more than 20 per cent, and painters and decorators more than 29 per cent. Out of more than 400,000 working men and women reporting from all trades throughout the state in 1907, more than 77,000, or 19 per cent, were not at work at the end of March of that year, while more than 65,000 did not work at all during the first three months of the year." (133)

But it is with the effect of these conditions that we are at present concerned. Dr. Tatham shows that the mortality of unoccupied males is two and a half times as great as that of occupied males. Mr. Percy Alden declares that the relation between inefficiency and unemployment is as close as that of drink and poverty, and quotes a large employer of labor as saying: --

"Between five and six per cent of my skilled men are out of work just now. During the long spell of idleness any one of these men invariably deteriorates. In some cases the deterioration is very marked. The man becomes less proficient and less capable,. . . nothing has a worse effect upon the caliber of such men than a spell of idleness." (134)

The warden of Kings County Jail, New York, said: --

"Over fifty per cent of the commitments to this institution are for vagrancy -- the crime (?) of being out of work and homeless. I am convinced from seeing the efficient work of some of these men while here, that they never would be here, could they have secured employment outside. By our treatment of the unemployed we are making criminals of men who have hitherto been honest, self-sustaining members of the community."