First Figures

The Census Bureau produced last week, from the mountainous data of its national canvass last spring, the first large-scale figures on current unemployment in the U. S. They were the first concrete, dependable figures to be set beside the guesses and estimates made by Administration officials and their critics since the first of the year. President Hoover had predicted that the "worst effects" of joblessness would be over by May. Secretary of Labor Davis had insisted no more than three million persons were out of work while William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, was declaring that jobseekers ran above 3,700,000. The Census Bureau's preliminary figure on unemployment: 2,298,588 or 2% of the total population.

This figure was arrived at as follows: Unemployment statistics for 766 counties and 75 cities having a combined population of 29,264,480, or 25% of the total estimated U. S. population, showed 574,647 persons out of work. By multiplying by four, the total unemployment estimate for the country at large was secured, subject to final correction. County unemployment was 1.5%, city unemployment 3%.

Declared Secretary of Commerce Lamont:

"The localities from which these returns originate . . . appear to be a representative sampling of the country. The figures . . . would indicate much less unemployment than was generally estimated. Since the time of the census [April, May] there has been the usual increase in employment in various seasonal occupations."

President Green of the A. F. of L. took an opposing and much less optimistic view of the labor situation and inferentially disputed the census figures with this declaration:

"The hoped-for improvement in unemployment did not materialize in June. Reports from trade unions show unemployment just as high as in May with 20% of the Union membership still out of work. The Federation estimate of the total number unemployed in May is 3,600,000. This figure does not include office workers or farm laborers. . . . Our June figures show a very serious unemployment situation. More than twice as many men are out of work this year as in June last year. -. . . Layoffs always come with the summer dull season [which] seems to have begun earlier than usual."

Meanwhile a significant report on public works and their relation to economic depression and unemployment was made last week by the Committee on Economic Changes of President Hoover's Conference on Unemployment, chairmanned by Arch Wilkinson Shaw of Chicago and including in its membership Owen D. Young (General Electric), Daniel Willard (Baltimore & Ohio), William Green (A. F. of L.), Louis John Taber (National Grange), Eugene Meyer (onetime member Federal

Farm Loan Board; and John J. Raskob (General Motors, du Pont). Declared the committee:

''Contracts awarded for public works and public utilities in the first four months of 1930 showed an increase of 30% over the corresponding period of 1929. This is striking evidence of acceleration."

But the committee found that mere increase in the volume of public works after a slump was not the whole solution. Continued the report:

"The amount of public construction to influence employment and the trend of business in a period of recession is less important than the timing of the acceleration. ... If properly timed, as the pendulum of employment starts to swing in an unfavorable direction, the influence of the prompt expedition of public works is effective out of all proportion to its size. . . ."

This long-range view by the President's Committee looked to many a political observer like an oblique endorsement of the three unemployment bills which Democratic Senator Wagner of New York put through the Senate but which have languished near to death in the House, The suspicion grew in Washington last week that the Republican House leaders had doomed the three measures largely because they bore a Democratic stamp.

On the theory that President Hoover if he chose could secure enactment by the House of the Wagner bills, a group of 800 potent economists and social workers last week petitioned the White House to use its influence for these measures. Adroitly they quoted to the President words of his own, uttered in 1921 when he was Secretary of Commerce, calling for the very things now provided in the Wagner bills. Said the petition:

"It would be inexcusable for this country to go through another winter--possibly rife with all the misery, unrest, and crime that go with involuntary unemployment-- without taking the moderate and soundly conceived measures of prevention for which provision is made in the three Wagner bills.''

Wagner provisions: 1) a $150,000,000 fund available for public construction as an offset to unemployment; 2) larger, better coordinated Federal employment agencies; 3) a comprehensive system for collecting labor statistics by the U. S. as a means of forecasting employment slumps.

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