Two Schemes

When Depression struck in 1929, unemployment was a problem for which the U. S. was totally unprepared. Last week, such was not the case. On the contrary, Recession's latest unemployment peak came just in time to coincide with two New Deal schemes especially designed to deal with it.

Riggers' Figures. First step in solving any problem is to find out what the problem is. Last autumn, Franklin Roosevelt appointed President John D. Biggers of Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co. to make the first census of U. S. unemployment. Mr. Biggers went to work at $1 a year, with a $5,000,000 appropriation and the aid of the Post Office Department. Last November, 81,000,000 unemployment blanks were distributed by letter-carriers to 32,000,000 U. S. homes. As the returns came in, a separate door-to-door census checked them in 1,864 areas scattered at random about the U. S.

Last week, Mr. Biggers' figures were complete enough to be presented to the President. Total number of people who had voluntarily returned questionnaires listing themselves as unemployed and willing to work was 7,822,912. Door-to-door census covering 1,950,000 persons indicated, however, that this was only about 72% of the people who, when ferreted out and interviewed, classed themselves as unemployed. On this basis total unemployed population of the U. S. would be 10,870,000. Said Mr. Biggers: "We do not claim provable accuracy for any one figure. The true number of those who considered themselves totally unemployed . . . lies between 7,-822,912, the number who responded to the registration, and 10.870,000, the number indicated by the enumerative census." Day after the nationwide figures were released, Mr. Biggers issued a supplementary report revealing the status of unemployment by States. New York headed the list with 969,840.

Not yet completely analyzed, Mr. Biggers' figures showed that of the questionnaire total, 2,000,000 considered unemployed were actually at work on relief jobs. Nearly 6,000,000 were men, nearly 2,000,000 women. Difficulty of interpreting the census--beyond weeding out cards from people who had misunderstood them even more completely than the 20% who, according to a Gallup Poll, thought their replies would bring them jobs--was where to draw the line between regular workers and housewives, sons of families, dependents, retired workers who work only at intervals. Mr. Biggers proposed that his census be further checked by a "cross-sectional enumeration of our test areas" to make his figures more informative.

Main inaccuracy of the census was obviously the fact that, while it included the first month of Recession, unemployment has grown more acute in the last month. Current unofficial estimates of the total number of workers who have lost their jobs since September average 2,000,000. In Detroit last week, in the biggest mass layoff of Recession, President William S. Knudsen of General Motors announced that 30.000 of the company's 235,000 employes would be laid off as of January 3 and that employes who remained on the payroll would operate on a threeday, 24-hr, week.

Unemployment Compensation. The Social Security Act, signed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, not only provided for Federal old age benefits to workers over 65, but also made special allowances for States which passed unemployment compensation laws. Last week, in 21 States* and the District of Columbia, the insurance scheme went into effect and henceforth workers who have been laid off will begin receiving benefits, varying from a minimum (usually $5 a week) to a maximum ($15 a week). Payments will continue in most cases for a maximum of 16 weeks.

The untried machinery for paying benefits was last week in no shape for the demands likely to be made on it by the current wave of dismissals. Even more likely to stall the New Deal's major scheme for alleviating unemployment misery is the probability that the total fund of approximately $400,000,000 now available for benefits will expire sooner than was foreseen. New York's fund of $88,812,000, in fact, would provide average benefits of $10 weekly for 16 weeks to only 555,075 people.

*Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia. Wisconsin, which passed its Social Security Act in 1932, started unemployment compensation payments in 1936.

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