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Real estate record and builders' guide: [v. 101, no. 2601: Articles]: January 19, 1918

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REAL ESTATE AND (Copyright, 1917, by The Record and Guide Co.) NEW YORK, JANUARY, 19, 1918 REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON SHORTAGE OF LABOR Investigation by American Federation of Labor Indicates Plenty of Labor, but Poor Housing Accommodations THE labor policy of the United States during the war depends upon the supply of wage-workers. If there is a sufficient number cf men to answer the demands of any branch of industry usu¬ ally employing men, there is plainly no need to call upon women to replace men. If by efficiently distributing the unem¬ ployed to the points where labor is actu¬ ally needed, the supply can be made to equal the demand, no extraordinary measures need be taken anywhere to obtain needed human power. It is of fundamental importance to this country to start right in this mat¬ ter of national policy. Every step to be taken now and in the future in the course of the war depends on getting at the undeniable facts relative to the supply of labor. So long as there is an unemployed, or partially unemployed, reserve to be drawn upon, there will evi¬ dently be no need to depart from the present standards of wages, hours, con¬ ditions and undilutions, as recognized by organized labor. Reports Show Sufficient Labor. To come at once to the facts: The October number of the American Fed- erationist contains a review of the labor situation of the country, made up of the substance of reports from' Federal De¬ partments, State Labor Bureaus, State employment agencies, and competent public observers, which warranted the conclusion that the cry of a scarcity of labor was false, lacking in particulars that could be substantiated, and untruth- ' fully promoted for selfish purposes. Fur¬ ther, to ascertain the facts in the mat¬ ter, President Gompers sent out a let¬ ter on October 12, to a certain number pf Central Labor Unions, especially in the industrial cities, and to international unions, particularly those making war supplies. Replies have been received to date from twenty-eight international unions, with a paid-up membership of 922,400 in the American Federation of Labor.- Members of your Committee of Inquiry have also consulted during the sessions of this convention, with the delegates of unions probably representing 500,000 other members. The written replies, without exceptions, state that there is no shortage of labor among their mem¬ bership. The great unions whose mem¬ bers are to supply the skilled labor in construction, in making uniforms and in transportation, all declare that they have unemployed members who may be turned to the service of the Government at any point at any time. There are mining districts on partial time, many boot and shoe and other factories either closed or on part time, cantonments and other building operations just finished or nearly finished, garment factories with tens of thousands of unemployed manu¬ factories avoiding the employme.it ot skilled machinists, while each of the trades concerned stands ready to supply labor from the ranks of its unemployed. From sixty-six cities the Central Labor bodies report no shortage of labor sup¬ ply. These cities represent all parts of the country, from coast to coast, and on estimate of the wage workers in the By JOHN TOBIN area of each city the total number reaches nearly one million. Not repre¬ sented in this list are the largest cities : New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Bos¬ ton, Baltimore, St. Louis, in each of which laborers by the thousands can be gathered at any time for any work. Letters from State labor bureaus and employment agencies and other authora- tive sources fully confirm the statements of the labor organizations. From Ohio comes: *'The Ohio employment bureaus raised 20,000 men for building the Chilli- cothe cantonment; practically all of these men were secured from the State of Ohio and without exception the in¬ dustries of the State were not at all disturbed. If Ohio can take 20,000 men and center them in one place in the course of a few weeks without dislocat¬ ing the industries of the State, there is no reason why the Federal Government should not be able to raise 100,000 men in the same time." During the month of September the twenty-two State em¬ ployment offices in Ohio received 45,796 applications for work from the unem¬ ployed, of whom 26,576 were placed, leav¬ ing nearly 20,000 on the registry. A Fed¬ eration organizer reports at one of the munition plants in New Jersey between 200 and 300 men can be seen any day waiting at the gates to apply for work; one morning 318 were counted. Many Applicants for Jobs. At the office of a Newark evening newspaper, at the time of the issue of the noon edition, 108 men were counted, waiting to be first to answer the "help wanted" advertisements. Several of the reports from organizations declare that companies are by settled policy hiring foreign labor and refuse to take on Americans. From our Building Trades Department in Washington the state¬ ment comes that a local contractor and builder who advertised for 600 carpen¬ ters, when waited upon by a labor rep¬ resentative said : "We have 100 now and we do not want any more." The Commissioner of Labor of Cali¬ fornia and the President of the Cali¬ fornia State Commission on Housing and Immigration both reported in the summer no lack of labor in California for permanent employment. The Director of the New York State Bureau of Employment says: "There is plenty of labor in this country to do the work there is to be done, and there will be plenty of labor as long as the war lasts, even if it lasts five years." The Public Employment Bureau, of Newark, N. J., was recently asked to furnish 1,000 men for skilled and un¬ skilled work at a cantonment. Within forty-eight hours the needed men were gathered and on their way to the work. Nothing more significant in the abun¬ dance of unemployed labor in this coun¬ try can be had than what is shown in the "labor turn-over" of many of the large firms which strive to obtain and overwork clicap labor. (Labor turn¬ over is a soft phrase meaning the merci¬ less hiring and firing of workmen). The following testimony has come from the managers of works, from employment agencies, from trade union officials, from published reports of labor inspectors and similar authoritative sources; Curtiss Aeroplane Company, of Ham- mondsport and Buffalo, N. Y.: Labor turn-over of 30 per cent, a month during several months preceding November 19, 1917. Pierce-Arrow Automobile Com¬ pany, of Buffalo, N. Y.; labor turn¬ over from 15 to 22 per cent, a month for nine months, previous to this date. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Com¬ pany of Manchester, N. H., employing from 22,000 to 25,000 help, labor turn¬ over averaging for five years from 54 to 79 per cent. The G. E. Keith Com¬ pany, of South Boston, Mass.: One plant has a labor turn-over of 20 per cent, a month. The Dennison Manu¬ facturing Company, of Framingham, Mass., labor turn-over of 46 per cent, a year. The Fore River Shipbuilding Cor¬ poration, of Quincy, Mass.: Hired 5,200 men between May 14, 1917, and August 14, 1917, to increase its labor force from 3,600 to approximately 7,000. The Austin Company Building Corporation em¬ ployed 80 skilled mechanics in a single day to increase its working force 9 men. Shortage of Other Essentials. This practice was kept up over a period of several months. So common in Buffalo was the practice of adver¬ tising for the semi-skilled, or unskilled, to come to fill places, presumably avail¬ able, that skilled mechanics, of which there were an abundance in that city, were forced to find employment two thousand miles away on Government jobs. The Detroit United Railways in nine and one-half months engaged 2,612 men, a labor turn-over of 300 a month, the men usually leaving because of un¬ satisfactory working conditions. In the same city, at the Ford plant, employing 38,000 men, the labor turn-over is only seven a month. That which employers and their public spokesmen represent as "shortage of labor" is, when sifted to the truth, al¬ most invariably a shortage of other essentials in industry. For example, a shortage of materials in the navy yards during the past year has been trans¬ lated into a shortage of labor. In the new munitions works in the course of construction, or nearly finished, there is frequently a shortage of the ma¬ chinery necessary to put labor at work. Great new manufacturing establish¬ ments have been erected at points to which the transportation of the em¬ ployes is most difficult or impossible. Uniforms are not finished at the time expected, simply because of a lack of dyes or looms to produce the duck for tentage and leggings. The lack of housing and not the lack of unemployed labor, keeps men and women away from the manufactories and farms, which have joined in the shout of the shortage of labor. The following are extracts from testimony taken before the Housing Committee, Committee on Labor, Advisory Commis¬ sion, Council of National Defense, October 3, 1917: Owing to the lack of housing, the Remington Arms Company, Bridgeport, Conn., lost two to three hundred men every week and had to send agents out to replace them. A man would come in with his kit, work for two days and