Insurance or Work

...Instead of provoking additional precautions and preventive measures against the evil it would remedy, it supplies a new incentive for the evil...

...Then came municipal assistance to the jobless in the form of labor exchanges (free) and insurance funds, and finally, in 1927, compulsory insurance sponsored by the national power...

...That is promises the material betterment of the condition of why private concerns have not tried this type of insurthe poor man and the laborer...

...and, , . , . a J J W. Dunn, secretary of the ;;fc M lgwt fha are ^ on utilitarianism alone> with n0 the weight of new or more Labor Research Association, sdid economic or ethicd foundations, it cannot be ex- forcefully presented reasonand Dr...

...Instead of merely being tided over a bitter period, the unemployed have become an ever-growing crowd of indolent paupers...

...In spite of multifarious provisions, precautions and ramifications, the German employment insurance cannot claim the success of the other social insurance legislation in that country...

...With this nation conditions were much more favorable for such an innovation than they were in England...

...why, then, should it not be equally metic, can readily see why an ordinary life policy, or beneficial in the problem under question...

...The cases are but isolated in which the holding of insurance causes people to take their lives, or burn their homes, for the sake of collecting from the company...

...Insurance of the potentially jobless is so unport, a fund against the workless days, months or sound and uncertain a risk that private companies, years that may come to those who are now at work...

...Why this aversion, we may ask, when nineteen self prominently on record as saying that the Ameri- other countries of note already encourage or compel can government will introduce this type of insurance their subjects to subscribe to insurance against the loss if American industry does not do it...

...Great Britain started the procession in this century by her National Insurance Act of 1911...

...It is purely a measure of expediency...

...The paternalism, or state socialism, of which federal systems of unemployment benefits are an outgrowth or a symptom, has not proved itself a good to the community...

...Insurance of this type must be forced into closer harmony with sound principles before much can be hoped from it...

...To add to the economic and sociological arguments against insurance of this color, we have the almost unbroken argument from history...

...but it is demoralizing for any number of ablebodied individuals to feel that the government has the duty of supporting them while they do not work— demoralizing both for those who are idle and for those who are carrying more than their share, in the meantime, by continuing to labor...

...This is especially true if he has the bliss of knowing that the government will hand him shillings indefinitely...

...unless they are directly concerned with the individuals The actual arguments in favor of unemployment in- participating, will not undertake it...

...Shall he be permitted to say it is the wrong sort of a job...

...The added facts that the payments, to allow a fair living, must frequently exceed farm wages, and that it is often possible and profitable to cheat the government administrators of the law have also tended to put not a very great premium on toil...

...So the rea- fire insurance, is a good investment...

...The Editors...

...The reasons for journment of Congress...

...Or shall he be denied the returns on his payments as long as there is any sort of work to be had anywhere ? Again, there is the violation of human sympathy involved in turning loose to starve a jobless person who has long been fed by the state...

...In the second place, besides being economically undesirable, the insuring of the jobless of tomorrow is not sociologically well founded...

...Furthermore, once they are out of work and are receiving government support for doing nothing, they are in no great hurry to find new positions...

...And there are numerous opposing federal unemployment insurance really go Americans of liberal tendencies, with a genuine interest much deeper than that...

...Only two months ago the House of Commons, against the protests of the rigorous, had to vote an additional $50,000,000 for this purpose...

...Then, also, the system grew up gradually in Germany, beginning in trade union benefits some fifty years ago...

...A child, with sufficient background in arithand health benefits...

...If the length of time, proportionate to the premiums paid, expires, the government must extend the duration or take the jobless worker and his family as charity cases...

...Senator James Couzens has put him- tion...

...For the backward...

...But this point is weak, by analogy, for the was not in any way included in the first actual step national funds have been welcomed in cases like toward national interference in the unemployment prob- maternity benefits when the national government has lem—the Wagner Unemployment Bills, which are now stretched forth a guiding finger without compelling any resting safely, almost in their graves, during the ad- action on the part of the states...

...Robert 'Po«*°r the plan...

...It begins with the excellent theory that the state owes a living to all its members, who should be guaranteed by it against interference with their right to earn a living...

...It tends to set the good of the state above that of its members, and to perform functions which the members could, with sufficient incentive and proper education, do for themselves, to the greater gain of their moral and social stamina...

...They rapidly changing industrial conditions and the inadeusually begin with the fact that there is a need for quacy of statistics for foretelling future events, the some sort of action to aid the millions who are now fund necessary for providing against emergencies in out of work, and to prevent a recurrence of the want employment would have to be so gigantic that privately which the present crisis has entailed...

...But the cleverest soning goes...

...We are told that jobs in France, for example, are of no attraction to the English because the scale of wages is too low...

...The principles beneath state insurance for unemployment unfortunately are assuredly dubious...

...For one thing, the people were much more accustomed to state socialism, and the state was more able to be inquisitive and paternal without becoming grandmotherly...

...There is always the question of what to do with the man who claims insurance although there is a job he could have...

...If it is objected that the salary of the worker is too small for saving, then it is also too small for paying insurance, and the remedy lies in adjustment of wages...

...McCadden agrees that large-scale fa a emergency or by X1[T t* r . , federal insurance is purely a measure of expediency...

...But insurance for the unemployed works in a vicious circle...

...Of course, it is well for the state to aid in connecting the worker with a vacant job...

...It rights...

...in their fellow-citizens, who do not think that any good In the first place, there is the argument from ecowould ever come of building up, by government sup- nomics...

...This has caused an elastic clause in the German law permitting benefits to some men who have worked only twenty-six weeks in three years...

...The answer usually given is that federal action in Yet federal insurance for the unemployed is as far this matter would be an infringement upon states' as ever from becoming a fact in the United States...

...Although there have been times when this insurance fund has had a balance, it has usually stood in debt to the government, which, in addition to its share of the premium, must then make "loans" of huge proportions for the relief of the jobless...

...ing- Our politicians, our big retary of the American As- men of business and many sociation for Labor Legislation, have lately joined of our middle-class and professional men are prohands with the Socialist who hopes for the governor- foundly suspicious of such government measures, which, ship of New York, Louis Waldman, in advocating they feel, might be a little less helpful than prohibisuch a measure...

...and by this time the individuals concerned are quite acclimated to being cared for by the kindly state...

...Therefore, those who ance, but have left it, a work of mercy, to the trade are in favor of such insurance, are moved largely by unions and the governments, optimism and idealism...

...It proceeds with the statement that most financier would find it impossible to fix a suitable European countries have tried it, and we should not be premium for insuring the payment of wages...

...Remedies for unemployment are certainly and immediately needed...

...but the legislation for the avowed benefit of the workers, and invention of a new machine, the changing of tariff this form of bill automatically carries the approval of rates, or the utilization of a new form of power will a great many who are interested in anything that upset the closest calculations on employment...

...INSURANCE OR WORK By HELEN M. McCADDEN MANY intelligent A time when many are jobless reawakens interest in The opponents of federal Americans have ex- social and industrial remedies for the evils of unemploy- insurance against unemploypressed themselves ment and poverty...

...The greatest strength, however, of the average span of life, and the average loss in fires, proposal comes from the fact that it involves social changes but little in the course of a century...

...Of course, no one can state how much of the present unemployment in Great Britain exists in spite of the insurance system and how much is directly due to it...

...John A. Ryan, who Sam and his states, who have so prodigally blessed the has frequently voiced the opinion, these past several people with revenue agents, schools, parks, mayors years, that such provision for hard times, although and police commissioners, have suddenly turned stingy I merely a palliative, would be a good one...

...For, with the surance under federal patronage are few...

...This is true because people who are paying a percentage of their wages toward increasing the government heap of wealth set aside for the jobless come to feel, after a time, that they are foolish not to collect on their premiums...

...and, like all laws that are built on utilitarianism alone, with no solid economic or ethical foundations, it cannot be expected to succeed...

...This Act provided that the amounts and duration of payments to a man out of work should depend upon the number of times he had contributed out of his wages...

...As far back as 1924, there were persons who had received doles in place of wages for several years...

...In addition, since this type of help would in no sense be self-supporting, even if the government subscribed half of the total, it can readily be seen that such insurance would really not be insurance at all, but charity—the detested dole—in a new and more silken disguise...

...yet it is generally conceded that the relaxation of the requirements for receiving benefits has not helped in the bringing together of men and jobs...

...But the greatest function of the state is to provide for the common welfare where the individual is, acting alone or in groups, impotent or unwilling...

...More specifically, the legislation under consideration seems to make the workers less individually reliant and provident and less industrious, causing them to leave to the state and to their fellow-citizens the function of finding and holding the means of making a livelihood, and of saving, by separate effort or through labor unions or other similar organizations, against a rainy day...

...Many a man would rather receive a bare existence, without any exertion but the presentation of the proper documents, than sweat and struggle for slightly higher compensation, or readjust himself to life in a foreign country or a colonial possession...

...They therefore lose interest in holding their places, and can easily find excuses for leaving or being "no longer needed...

...Here also, in spite of the German thoroughness and the businesslike manner in which German political affairs are handled, many troubles appeared which no amount of painstaking law-enactment could push away...

...Insurance under government auspices ment have thus far carried in favor of government in- » one of the most familiar and frequently recommended the day in this country, and surance for those who are °f these- The following paper examines the reasons why they bid fair to continue to likely to lose their jobs in Puhlie 0P{nion has generally speaking, been reluctant to do SQ undl th are bowed times of depression...

...Last, but not of the family job...

...Another force operates to make this social palliative unsound from the economic viewpoint...

...Thus the experiences of nations have lent force to the opinion that large-scale federal insurance against joblessness is not a good thing...

...However, it was found difficult to stop the state support of a man who, with his family, had become dependent upon the government, even if the insurance actually due him was long exhausted...

...Mrs...

...John Andrews, sec- pected t0 succeed...

...Likewise, it has not prevented the problem from becoming so great as to affect vitally the rise and fall of cabinet ministers and governments...

...But, in that category, national insurance does not seem to fit...

...It appears that, while the English government has been trying to save the self-respect of its workers by conceding their right to a wage even when there is no work, it has really demoralized the nation economically...

...Another large country which has tried out government-managed compulsory unemployment insurance is Germany...

...Perhaps it is the thought of this spectacle that has made the legislators at Washington and in our state capitals wary...

...Thus federal unemployment insurance would increase both actual unemployment and the need for such insurance, which is certainly not the remedy we are seeking for an already grievous situation...

...Social insurance insured persons would never consider it worth subhas met with success in the form of accident, old age scribing...

...Surely, it cannot be that Uncle least, we mention the name of Dr...

...Many a well-meaning state has paid its share toward the fund which was intended to make the employed more thrifty and more secure, and has waked up to find itself dispensing of its moneys to thousands of overnight beggars and loafers...

...Here it was required, not only that workers insure themselves against sickness, but also that in certain trades the employee and his master each pay equally to an employees' unemployment fund, while the state would contribute one third as much as their joint payment...

...Since 1911 Great Britain has involved herself more and more deeply in the obligation to provide sustenance for the idle...

...She has stretched the application of unemployment insurance, first to cover war industries, and finally to include some twelve million or more wage-earners...