given for thorough investigation of each case. We may be certain that, with the classified information already at hand, this would weed out at the very start, before the pressure were upon us, a very large proportion of the most perplexing cases, exactly as a perfectly fair work test will drive four-fifths of the tramps out of any town or state. We should then have left, what has been called the remnant of the genuine." With this remnant I believe we are perfectly competent to deal, if we have anything like the development of industrial and trade schools that other countries are getting. Here is a grievous want. Among the great majority is an appalling lack of even the beginning of any kind of skill. The skilless workman in the age of highly developed industry is, especially in cities, at a terrible disadvantage.* He can produce nothing for which market value exists; nothing for which there is a real want.

Can

it be too soon understood that this large class, which our chaotic immigration swells to such unwieldy proportions, cannot be supplied with made work except at ludicrously extravagant expense?

I pit the Boston experiment upon the whole against any of which I have heard and yet, if superintendence and rent were counted in, I am convinced that street work, men and women's sewing work counted together would give a result like that of putting into one end of a machine dollars and getting out at the other end possibly thirty cent pieces. Some sewer work paid better simply because fit men were deliberately selected for the purpose, but the whole $100,000 expenditure was a frightful waste, the sole excuse of which

*There are no names of higher authority than those (like Siemens, Playfair, Galton) who hold that there is a kind of inevitableness in the present supply of material for charity subjects and the unemployed. The rapidity and the vast scale upon which science and invention are being applied, with the consequent demand for greater skill, vigor and enterprise among employers and laborers alike, throws upon the weak a strain too great to be met. A pace is set which they cannot follow. If we add to this that these are often gathered in cities where the centres of organized vice-dance-house, saloon, gaming-do upon such forced idlers a very deadly work, we see that the supply of material for charity and the unemployed is constantly renewed.

was the character of the exigency for which no sort of adequate preparations were made. It was early so evident that the result was to be failure that a few of us determined that careful statistics should be gathered as to nationality, trade, condition of family, time out of work, etc., for the purpose of having something to guide us in the future. Light will be thrown upon a few vital points, only one or two of these here concern us. It is quite probable that some 15,000 more than usual were out of work. If these were out of work as was claimed some four months, it would require the organization of work for which more than one and a half millions of money must be paid. This at least shows the magnitude of the problem of "furnishing work," but put beside this the actual achievement the almost ludicrous result.

Perhaps half this 15,000 have had work given them, but how long? I believe less than two weeks. Large numbers got but a single shift of three days; a very large number but two shifts during the entire winter. Is this less than farcical? Think of the aroused expectation and the consequent disappointment. It is hardly conceivable that if no inducements had been held out of city employment, these people would not, upon the whole, have themselves found more work than the average of them got. Two or three thousand were made bitter by the emptiness of the result, and the citizens who sent them, thinking that all had a right to the fund, were quite as indignant. When the facts are clear we shall see a little better what it means to furnish anything like adequate work for a large mass of men and women, most of whom are practically unskilled.

Is it then to be doubted that industrial and trade schools must become a part of this problem? A large proportion of these unskilled were young enough to learn. I repeat, the one thing we cannot afford to do is to patch up work for the unskilled. It is turning dollars into thirty-cent

pieces. First, let us have, in country and city, bureaus of information, so that applicants can be investigated before there is undue haste or pressure. Second, organized graded work tests that shall show us (a) those who do not propose to work (6), the capacity, skill or lack of skill which the applicant possesses.

For the capable among these, work can be found (except in extreme depression) if demand in the country is organized with city sources. For those who have learned to do nothing for which society will pay, what fit or hopeful place is there but some form of training school, whether forestry, farm colony or trade school? If it is said "they will not go to such school," my reply is that social responsibility is then, for such cases, at an end, as society has done its duty in finding a girl a decent place in the country. They often refuse to leave the city, but I maintain that we cannot for an instant admit that it is our duty to furnish work in any one locality.

The final question remains, What of the tramp and all his kind, whose pretence of seeking work is but a form of begging? What of those who have been offered work and refused it? To the extent that public opinion can be slowly won to it, I see but one answer. All such must be put upon a penal farm colony or into a training school, but in either case as much under constraint as if they were in prison. There shall be, however, this difference, that they shall be given an absolutely fair opportunity to work their way out by proving two things-first, that they can do something useful, and second, that they will do it. If they continue to refuse both, then there is more reason why they should be kept under *While this paper was in press a reply to inquiries in Holyoke, Mass., was received, in which it appears that a quite careful estimate was made of the market value of certain work done by the unemployed. It is believed that the men earned "less than thirty cents in every dollar they were paid." This was, of course, due in part to the necessary substitution of hand for machine work. It also appears

that in 533 days' work given, each person got but seven days.

These tests, to be in the least fair, must be in such variety as to gauge at least the willingness to work, and also to avoid asking impossible tasks of those whose habits of work have unfitted them for heavy, rough work.

constraint than in the case of an insane person. Socialists affirm that society is to blame for the tramp. This is possible, but it is not a question of blame, but of social danger. We do not blame the insane but shut them up, because they are socially unsafe. I submit that the most superficial study of the tramp question and that of the chronic beggar generally, in their effects upon social life leaves no doubt that any kind of handling of our problem, so long as they are mixed bewilderingly together with the worthy and hopeful those I mean who have at least good-will, and for whom something can be done so long as nine-tenths of the citizens cannot in the least distinguish between these hopeful elements on the one side and the despairing ones on the other, we are blocked from taking even the first steps toward a rational dealing with this problem of charity and the unemployed. This dead-beat crowd by any test that we apply to it is our greatest plague. Indirectly its expense is incomparably greater than all the disciplinary measures I am proposing. when this crowd is considered in its relation to that part of the population question which furnishes us the constant stream of the undervitalized and unfit, we see that no real gain is possible until these sources of our trouble are reached. The three great passions-the sexual, gaming and drink are furnished in our cities such occasion for mischief as the world has not seen. The brothel, gambling and the saloon are organized into such formidable enticements and on so vast and various a scale, that they work in the deadliest conceivable way upon this class which makes our difficulty. Here the stuff for charity and the unemployed is manufactured as cloth in a mill. What a comment upon our intelligence that Massachusetts should allow 8000 feeble-minded girls to be loose in the community breeding their kind, instead of humanely and kindly shutting them up. The tramp and professional beggar in every form is quite as distinct a danger to society, and as fruitful of recruits for charity

To the extent that immigration is furnishing us with creatures of this type, it is, of course, a source of the same mischief and should be dealt with as such. May I repeat

(1.) Employment bureaus distributed over county and city districts with investigation so organized that it can do its work before it is too late to manage the applicants.

(2.) Adequate graded work tests that shall convince the public that the applicant has been taken fairly at his word and offered what he claims to be seeking,-work. Such work tests separate the beat in every variety from those for whom something may be done, because of the will to do something.

(3.) Trade schools (agriculture included) to which thosecan be sent who have accepted the tests and proved their willingness, but lack of skill and capacity.

(4.) Places of discipline and training (farm colonies and workshops), to which those who are able, but deliberately refuse to work, can be sent as to a prison, where they shall be kept until they prove their willingness and ability to earn an honest livelihood.*

If slowly and cautiously we were to work our way toward an organization of these four measures, that should become part of a common discipline, it seems to me fair to hope that we should begin to act upon public opinion so as to secure its co-operation. The public does not now believe that the luckless and unfortunate is given a fair chance to work and therefore it supports him as a beggar. When the public knows that fair tests have been refused it will be prompt to

* Every whit of evidence from the Belgian, Holland and German labor colonies shows that compulsion must have far larger use. The very fact that such persons are at least chronic idlers proves that they will not freely submit themselves to that degree of discipline which is necessary to create the habit and capacity of work. The evidence is overwhelming that if it is once admitted that such men and women should be put upon colonies or into shops, compulsion is a necessity. This admission of constraint does not imply, except for the refractory cases, harsh treatment in any form. Any degree of freedom and fair dealing may be allowed which is consistent with that degree of training which the case demands.