Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1917 — Less Unemployment Likely In America in Near Future As Result of the Great War [ARTICLE]

Less Unemployment Likely In America in Near Future As Result of the Great War

At present, and In all probability in the near future, according to a report of a medical committee on social insurances reported in the American Medical Journal, this country will have less and less unemployment, and there is no question that with the war and with the destruction of life and peoples in Europe, in the very countries from which, in recent years, this country has drawn its vigorous unskilled labor, the immigration which has come to these shores so abundantly will enormously diminish, and there will be a dearth of labor and a rise in wages. At present, however, there is no question that even-in good times the wage earners of this country are Unemployed for from one-fifth to onefourth —20 to 25 per. cent—of the working days of the year. Those who are dependent on their dally wages have thus to consider a further diminution of what is apparently their actual wage. All investigations on the amount of wages have shown that about fourfifths of the men and nineteen-twentl-eths of the women earn less than S6OO a year to support their families, and this amount of wage is not able, even in this country, to support those families on a fair standard of living." This is ape cause of the enormous mass of woman and child labor.