ANY attempt at a statistical estimate of the num

ber of wage-earners now the victims of enforced idleness throughout the United States would rest upon data too insufficient to give it much value. As some one rather pithily remarked the other day, so well informed an authority on labor questions as Professor Ely would give an estimate reaching well into the millions, while on the other hand so expert a statistician as Mr. Edward Atkinson would probably not be able to find more than a hundred thousand in the entire country. The remark, of course, was intended to show to what extent the habitual point of view is likely to bias the inquirer's judgment in a matter where no precise data are available. Certainly there has not been known for at least twenty years a time when so high a proportion of workingmen were cut off from their regular means of support, with so little prospect of an early return to their places. Factories are either shut down altogether, or are run with reduced forces. The shrinkage of the volume of railway traffic has thrown out of employment thousands upon thousands of men usually engaged in the service of the common carriers. The building trades are either unprecedentedly dull, or wholly paralyzed, and consequently the carpenters, brick masons, stone workers, plasterers, and various other crafts dependent upon finding work in house construction, are experiencing, not the usual three or four months' leisure out of twelve, but five or six months of inactivity, with no very good prospects before them. In Pittsburgh, there is an army of idle men from the iron, glass, coke and other representative Pennsylvania industries. In New York, the tailors, mechanics and operatives on the east side are, according to reliable reports, out of work to the extent of about half of their number. In Chicago, a reaction from the exceptional demand for labor occasioned by the World's Fair has been a special cause, co-operating with the general industrial depression; and in consequence more than one hundred thousand workers are out of employment in that city. A state of things which has thus affected the great industrial centres has been felt in many of the small manufacturing communities with a severity quite as great in proportion to their population.

Fortunately, a hundred thousand men temporarily out of work in an American city does not mean a hundred thousand applicants for charity, or subjects for relief measures. The greater proportion of the out-of-works are able unaided to tide over, for a period. Many of them have good accounts at the savings banks, many others have friends and relatives to help them, many more have lenient landlords and credit with the grocer, and many enjoy a

good understanding with their employer, whose shop or mill it is confidently believed must be running again before many weeks. The buoyancy of American life is a thing not understood by European visitors. In a city like London there is always a vast contin gent of hopeless and helpless out-of-works, and there is a comparatively scant opportunity for the individual to better his condition. In this country, despite all assertions to the contrary, there is generally work enough for everybody who is willing to work, at wages which with proper economy will enable the worker to lay aside something for a rainy day. The operation of natural economic laws will tend to draw a part of the temporarily congested population of the towns back to the land, and out to the newer parts of the country, where there is still room for millions of people and a fair chance by hard work and frugal living to secure a safe livelihood.

The situation, therefore, is not one which justifies pessimism, socialistic raving, gloomy foreboding, or anything else except prompt, sensible and wellplanned efforts to prevent actual suffering and to assist in the readjustment of times which are for the moment out of joint. With all the work that charitable societies and relief agencies must do, it will still remain true that by far the largest part of the task of preventing or alleviating distress must be performed in a hand-to-hand way by individuals. Thus every humane employer must do everything in his power, first, to keep all his regular force at work, and, second, if he is unable to keep them at full and regular work, to see that none of them become objects of public charity. Furthermore, it should be the business of the more prosperous employees and workmen to show a kindly regard for their less fortunate associates. Again, every man and woman who can in one way or another find employment to give, should make it both a duty and a privilege to distribute work as widely as possible. It is a good thing, for example, to give work to dressmakers, seamstresses, tailors and all classes of honest people who can thus be kept from the humiliating necessity of applying for charitable relief. A vast deal of the most valuable kind of assistance can be rendered by judicious advice in helping the unemployed to make their slender resources go as far as possible. Medical and kindred forms of relief and advice can often be supplied without cost where it would be unwise and unfortunate to give money.

Thus v hen due lowance is made for those of the unemployed who have saved enough to take ample care of Ciem selves, and for those who through their cimply as or other friends can be tided over and kept from the necessity of applying for relief to the public