Modern Economic Problems Part 27

There still remain some unanswered questions such, for example, as: whether in seasonal trades (e.g., teaching, or the building trades) allowance should be made for normal vacations and for slack times, not to be counted as unemployment; and whether lack of work at one's princ.i.p.al occupation is ever or always unemployment when the person is actually employed or can get work at some lower paid employment. The more frequent answer to these questions is in the negative but this in some cases is almost palpably absurd. Further study is necessary to work out a generally acceptable concept of unemployment.

-- 14. #Individual maladjustments causing unemployment.# The cause or causes of the evil must be ascertained before a remedy can be intelligently applied. It is pretty generally agreed that unemployment is essentially a problem of maladjustment of the labor supply, and not that of an absolutely and permanently redundant supply. That is, there is, under static conditions, work for all to do at various rates of wages that would bring about a value equilibrium of services.[9] The maladjustments are either of an individual or of a general character.

Individual maladjustment may be due to a mistake in choosing an occupation (e.g., through the vain ambition of one unfitted to be an artist, actor, lawyer, or teacher); or to failure to acquire by adequate training the necessary skill; or to loss of capacity by accident, old age, or failure of mental or moral powers; in all of which cases the problem verges upon or becomes that of the unemployable. The "can't-works" and the "won't-works" must be divided from the "want-works." If there is any remedy in such cases it must be through re-education, personal reform, or change of occupation.

Many persons look upon this type of cases as almost wholly accounting for the problem of the unemployed. They are confirmed in this opinion by the fact that the out-of-work group in any trade at any time is, on the average, the least efficient group of workers in the trade. This results from selection by the employers. This selection is due to the _relative_ not to the _absolute_ efficiency or inefficiency of workers, and must result whenever there are any discoverable economic differences in the workers (all things considered) that are employed at the same wage. This would continue even tho the poorest workers were to raise their efficiency above that of the best men now retained. "Personal inefficiency" may explain a chronic low wage or absolute unemployability in a particular case, but it does not explain intermittent lack of work for those willing and able to work.

Unemployment is a social problem and not merely an individual problem.

-- 15. #Maladjustment of wages causing unemployment.# It seems highly probable that the artificial maintenance of a wage above the compet.i.tive, or value-equilibrium, rate of the individual, whether this be done by sympathy, by custom, or by the action of trade unions, must cause some maladjustment of workers in relation to available jobs and thus increase unemployment. To doubt this is again to maintain the absolute inelasticity of the demand for labor with changes in its price.[10] If the true equilibrium wage in a certain industry were $3.00 a day, then a wage of $4.00 a day would attract to the trade more than enough workers to meet the demand for labor in normal periods (unless entry to the trade is controlled by monopoly power), and at length the losses from unemployment would balance the day-wages received in excess of the rate obtaining elsewhere for that quality of labor. Any artificial obstacles to change of occupation or to concessions in the kind of work done and in the rate of wages must operate to increase the maladjustment. So far as this maladjustment occurs, it may cause unemployment neutralizing the apparent gain of higher day-wages obtained by monopoly power. The very inertia of wages, however, in new price situations[11] makes the wage-workers resist more vigorously such a policy of wage concessions. Moreover, the difficulty here indicated is more particularly one occurring in static conditions and is to be distinguished from the dynamic maladjustments next to be considered.

-- 16. #Individual maladjustment in finding jobs.# Another kind of individual maladjustment is the failure of the jobless man to connect with the manless job. A certain amount of this maladjustment must exist in the most stable industries and in the most settled industrial conditions. Fluctuations occur in the market demand for the products of various establishments, requiring the taking on or laying off of some men. Fluctuations occur in the plans both of employers and of wage-workers as a result of age, of removal, for reasons more or less non-economic, of desire to change occupations, of variations in health, and of countless other causes. The needs of the employer for a worker, and of the worker for a job, are mutual. To a large degree these various fluctuations are mutually compensatory, workers going and coming, orders increasing here and decreasing there. Total jobs and total workers capable of filling the jobs, are at any moment in normal times equal quant.i.ties, if they can be brought together. But almost everywhere is lacking a real labor-market. The subst.i.tutes for it are largely ineffective: trade-union action, employers'

a.s.sociations, "want ads," cards in shop windows, weary walks from door to door, lines of waiting men outside of factories, private employment agencies. At their best the private employment agencies perform valuable services within limited fields, but they are uncoordinated, and utterly inadequate to meet the chief need, and at their worst they are the instruments of great abuses against the unemployed.

-- 17. #Public employment offices.# Vigorous efforts to create local "free employment offices," or "labor exchanges," began in a number of countries about 1895. The movement gained headway in the next ten years and has since steadily grown. In Germany the chief exchanges have been founded and conducted by the munic.i.p.alities (while others are controlled by the unions and by groups of employers) and have remained largely decentralized, tho cooperating to some extent through voluntary state conferences of officials of the exchanges, and since 1915 required to report to the imperial statistical office. The total number of exchanges in Germany (in 1915) was nearly 3000. The general results have been remarkably good, altho not completely satisfactory.

Every industrial country of Europe has done something of this kind.

Great Britain, however, after some experiments with a similar local system, established in 1909 the first national system of "labor-exchanges." In America the movement is developing in three directions, through munic.i.p.al, state, and federal offices. These are united (since 1913) in an "American a.s.sociation of Public Employment Offices." In 1915 there were known to be 99 state and city employment offices distributed through 30 states, besides federal offices operated in 18 cities in connection with the Bureau of Immigration.

The clearly recognized task is now to coordinate these various agencies into an efficient national system, eliminating partizan politics and elevating the management of all branches to the plane of professional service. Through these agencies can be operated an industrial service, a.n.a.logous in function to the weather bureau, and reporting from day to day the pressure of demand and the prospects for labor in the various parts of the country. The economic results of a complete, exclusive, and efficient service of this kind would far exceed its legitimate cost to the community.

-- 18. #Fluctuations of industry causing unemployment.# Any one of the maladjustments in employment thus far considered may occur at a given moment, in static conditions of industry. But there are also maladjustments resulting from more general industrial changes throughout a period of time. The two main types of these are seasonal and cyclical changes, the one occurring within a year, and the other occurring within the longer period of the business cycle. At the downward swing of these seasonal and cyclical changes the number of would-be workers exceeds the number of jobs [12] and the resulting unemployment is greatest when the minor and the major swings are both downward, about midwinter in a period of industrial depression. Thus in 1893-94, and to a lessening degree in 1894-95, 1895-96; in 1907-08, and 1914-15. Of course employment offices alone are no remedy for the exceptional difficulties of such times, and the individual, whether he be an unfortunate "out-of-work" or a more fortunate well-wisher, feels helpless in the face of the overwhelming burden of distress. Such a situation is declared by the radical communists to spell the bankruptcy of the wage-system; while the most conservative students of the subject confess that this periodic chaos in the labor market is the strongest indictment of, and involves the gravest dangers to, the existing economic and social order.

-- 19. #Remedies for seasonal fluctuations.# But of late there has been a growing hope that an answer may be found to this economic riddle of the Sphinx. A number of different measures are being experimentally tested and applied. Many years of effort will be required for the perfecting of these plans separately and collectively. Some of these plans may be here indicated, however briefly. To remedy seasonal fluctuations within the establishments output may be regularized by taking orders in advance; by producing various products successively in the same factory; by overcoming weather conditions as has been done successfully in brick and tile making, ditch digging, and building operations; by transferring workers from one department of an establishment to another; by improving the employment departments so as to build up a more stable force, thus reducing the great expense of "hiring and firing" and the loss through training "green hands"; by varying the length of the working day while keeping the same working force throughout the year; by cooperating with other industries to build up a regular working force and transferring it from one establishment to another with seasonal changes.

Of great aid in a number of these measures is a broader industrial training for the workers, making them more able to change from one occupation to another. For this purpose every period of unemployment and of temporary shortening of the working day ought to be used as a time for trade education, by the recently devised and successfully applied "short-unit courses for wage-earners."[13]

-- 20. #Reducing cyclical unemployment and its effects.# The maladjustments due to the movement of the business cycle are even more difficult to remedy completely, but are diminished by every measure that helps to reduce the great financial fluctuations.[14] Further, many communities have already begun to plan large public works more systematically so that they may be carried on mainly when private business is more slack. A comparatively small amount of such work would serve as a gyroscope to preserve the balance of employment for a large part of the less skilled workers. It has been estimated by Bowley, an English statistician, that in the United Kingdom, it would be necessary to set aside only 3 per cent of the annual expenditure for public works to be used additionally in years of industrial depression, in order to balance the wage loss at such times. This is a well-nigh incredibly small proportion, hardly as great as that of the weight of the gyroscope compared with the car or ship to which it is applied. It is hardly to be doubted that hitherto, in America, public undertakings have been executed much more largely in periods of business prosperity, and have been diminished during "hard times,"

thus greatly accentuating the harmful swing of the labor-demand.

Finally, unemployment insurance, which has already been applied by parliamentary legislation in Great Britain to a group of nearly 3,000,000 wage-workers, is an indispensable and highly hopeful measure of relief. The place of this in a general system of industrial insurance will be indicated in the next chapter.

[Footnote 1: See above, ch. 20, sec. 1.]

[Footnote 2: See ch. 23, secs. 5-7, on the old law of employer's liability.]

[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, pp. 292-293.]

[Footnote 4: See Vol. I, p. 304.]

[Footnote 5: See Vol. I, pp. 293 and 303.]

[Footnote 6: See above, ch. 12, sec. 2.]

[Footnote 7: Great importance should not be attached to these figures for they contain errors resulting from the inexact notions of inexperienced enumerators as to what const.i.tutes unemployment, and from the inclusion of all persons gainfully employed, whether self-employed or in professional, salaried, or wage-earning positions.]

[Footnote 8: See Vol. I, p. 207, on irregularity of employment as influencing wages, psychic income, and choice of employment.]

[Footnote 9: On static, see Vol. I, ch. 32; on the scarcity of labor, see Vol. I, ch. 18, sec. 2 and references there; on value of services and wages see Vol. I, ch. 18, especially sec. 3, and ch. 19, especially sec. 7.]

[Footnote 10: See above, ch. 21, sec. 9 on the minimum wage.]

[Footnote 11: See Vol. I, p. 223, on friction in the adjustment of wages.]

[Footnote 12: See above, ch. 10, secs. 6 and 7, on the industrial crisis.]

[Footnote 13: See Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 159 (April, 1915). ]

[Footnote 14: See above, ch. 8, secs. 6, 7; ch. 9, secs. 6, 8; ch. 10, secs. 14, 16; ch. 14, sec. 12. ]

CHAPTER 23

SOCIAL INSURANCE

-- 1. Purpose and meaning of social insurance. -- 2. Increasing need of social insurance. -- 3. The new era of social insurance. -- 4. Features of social insurance. -- 5. Historical roots of accident insurance. -- 6.

Development of compensation for accidents. -- 7. The compensation plan in America. -- 8. Standards for a compensation law. -- 9. Historical roots of sick-insurance. -- 10. Need of sick-insurance in America.

-- 11. Old-age and invalidity pensions. -- 12. Unemployment insurance.

-- 13. Need of ideals in social insurance. -- 14. Insurance rather than penalty. -- 15. The compulsory principle. -- 16. State insurance and a unified system. -- 17. The contributory principle.

-- 1. #Purpose and meaning of social insurance.# In importance surpa.s.sing at present any one of the various measures on behalf of the wage-earning cla.s.s that have thus far been considered is the remarkable development now under way of plans and agencies to provide insurance for "the common man." Insurance means making some kind of provision out of present means, so as to reduce the injury and suffering that would result from a future mishap. Usually, likewise, it implies uniting with others to distribute the expense fairly over all in the group. Social insurance is the term most frequently applied to the various inst.i.tutions and plans provided, more or less under the regulation of law, for the protection of the lower-paid workers in most modern countries. The terms industrial insurance and workingmen's insurance are likewise used. The princ.i.p.al types of events for which social insurance in its various branches provides, are (1) accident, (2) sickness, (3) incapacitation (either by old age or by invalidity, that is, permanent failure of health within the normal working years), (4) death (generally called "life" or "survivor" insurance), and (5) unemployment.

The direct aim of social insurance is not to prevent these mishaps (tho that may be an indirect result), but it is to provide some financial indemnity for the economic loss and expense involved in the mishap. The princ.i.p.al kinds of losses are two. First, that occasioned directly in caring for the sick or injured person, the expense of medical attention, nursing, hospital care, drugs and special apparatus such as crutches and gla.s.ses, and burial expenses. The second is the loss of income because of inability to work as a result of injury, of illness, or of permanent disability, or (in the case of life insurance) of the death of the bread-winner, or of want of employment.

-- 2. #Increasing need of social insurance.# In various connections we have observed how the changes that have been occurring in modern times have increased the uncertainties of the industrial life and of the earning power of the ma.s.s of the workers.[1] It should be further observed that in city conditions, a working family does not have, as in agricultural conditions, the supplementary sources of income from garden, field, forest, and stream, and it is not so possible to use the earning power of children, of old people, and of the partially disabled. The faster working pace of factories, the rapid fluctuations of employment with changing fashions, inventions, shifts of population, and waves of industrial prosperity and depression, all have introduced new risks and problems into the worker's life. The increasing payment of wages in money, and the more temporary nature of employment of men in many kinds of factory work, have added to the problem. With these changes have come a growing interest in the welfare of the ma.s.s of the workers and a growing sense of responsibility on the part of the public.

There is an appalling ma.s.s of misfortune in the United States requiring social insurance for its relief, altho satisfactory statistics of the various types of misfortune are still lacking. On the basis of the experience of private industrial insurance companies it appears that there are not less than 25.000 fatal industrial accidents yearly, and 700,000 injuries causing disability for more than four weeks, to say nothing of the enormous number of slight injuries--if injuries, many of them very painful, disabling for a period from one day to four weeks, should be called slight. As to loss of time due to illness, the experience of Germany shows an average of eight or nine days a year per worker, which figure, applied to those gainfully employed in America, would mean nearly 300,000,000 days of illness, or 1,000,000 one-man working years, causing a loss estimated to be $750,000,000 annually.

It is estimated that one on eighteen of American wage-workers attains the age of sixty-five with no financial provision for old age, and that about 1,250,000 persons above the age of sixty-five are dependent on their families or on charity, public or private, receiving $250,000,000 yearly.

The losses and suffering to dependents due to the death of the bread-winner are very partially accounted for by accidents, but no estimate of much value can now be made of the other cases. Some notion of the losses from unemployment has been given in discussing that subject in the preceding chapter.

-- 3. #The new era of social insurance.# Some not insignificant attempts to deal with these problems were made throughout the nineteenth century, but the new era of social insurance may be said to date from the message of the Emperor William to the German Reichstag in 1881, in which he said:

We consider it our imperial duty to impress upon the Reichstag the necessity of furthering the welfare of the working people.... In order to realize these views, a bill for the insurance of workmen against industrial accidents will first of all be laid before you; after which a supplementary measure will be submitted, providing for a general organization of industrial sick-relief insurance. Likewise, those who are disabled in consequence _of_ old age, or invalidity, possess a well-founded claim to more relief on the part of the state than they have hitherto enjoyed.

The program here outlined was carried out by the enactment between 1883 and 1889 of a series of laws, which taken together const.i.tuted a pretty effective system of social insurance for the ma.s.s of wage-workers in the German Empire. Later amendments have extended and improved the various features of the plan, which has served as a stimulative example to other countries. America has been the tardiest among all the industrial nations to undertake this kind of social reform.

-- 4. #Features of social insurance.# The plans of social insurance, in force in various countries, present a great variety of features combined in many ways. The main characteristics in which they may differ relate to (1) the element of compulsion, (2) contributions by the insured, (3) the nature of the insurance organization.

Insurance may be _voluntary_ or _compulsory_. It is voluntary when the state simply encourages the formation of insurance agencies, and perhaps contributes something to them, leaving it to the individuals to insure themselves as they choose, in mutual societies, or in privately managed companies. In the case of accident insurance, however, there is often a semi-compulsion by which the employer is requires to pay indemnity to his workers, according to fixed scales of compensation, but is left free to insure himself against this risk or not as he pleases, in which case it is still called voluntary insurance. Compulsory insurance is that which the state requires to be provided be means of some mutual organization of the insured, or of the employers, or by the state.

Insurance may be _contributory_ or _noncontributory_. It is on the contributory plan when the insured workers contribute something toward the premiums that provide the funds for eventual payment. It is noncontributory when the funds are provided either by the employers or by the state without any payments from the insured.

Insurance may be (a) in _private_ companies, carrying on the business for profit; or (b) in _mutual_ companies of workingmen, or of employers insuring themselves against the cost of compensation in case of accident to their employees; or (c) in a _state_ bureau, or fund, organized and conducted by government.

-- 5. #Historical roots of accident insurance#. The different kinds of social insurance had different origins, some knowledge of which is necessary to an understanding of the present situation. These origins still affect the nature of social insurance to-day, and have prevented the development of a truly unified and logical system in accord with present conceptions of needs and of justice.