M

R. HOOVER'S conference on unemployment has turned every one's mind to the subject, if events more personal and less interesting have not already done so.

I want to record briefly and faithfully what one company-in a major New England industry, employing in normal times five thousand-did on the basis of the facts, forced rather rudely into their averted faces. Some similar study and programme of action, locally adapted of course, must be carried out with all the daily follow-up and drudgery of it if Mr. Hoover's conference is to bear the fruit it deserves.

I had been at work some months in overalls in the rolling mill when the depression hit us. There the sub-foremen had been demoted to rollers, the rollers to stickers, and the stickers to helpers, and all the helpers stood about waiting for the knife to fall. They expected to lose their jobs, and carried about with them a kind of desperate cheerfulness. A dozen or two fell under the knife every pay day. When I got into the employment office, laying off was in full swing. Heavy reductions in working hours had already decimated the pay envelope-three days of eight hours were being worked in many places, instead of five and a half of ten. The bulk of the men lived uncomfortably near the margin of subsistence. In the employment office I found women appearing with babies in their arms and surrounded with children in order to furnish living arguments in favor of rehiring their husbands. The smaller

ployment manager has received eight requests from foremen, former employees, the superintendent, and a vicepresident, for two nephews, three brothers, and three old friends. A vague atmosphere of protesting merit, penury, and drag surrounds these applica tions. It is sufficient, in lieu of stronger principles, to capture the first eight openings from the employment office. The employment manager then turns to the small sea of faces whose outer waves can be seen through the glass doors of the waiting-room. He "selects" two tall chaps who tower up in the eighth row. They are brothers, who worked for the company for three weeks in 1916. They are both single. One of them keeps a grocery store and is self-supporting. Of the remaining five whom he extracts from the sea by a quick jerk of the head in the candidates' direction and a stac cato "You!" their records, if there were any, would show:

One, married, two children, three months' former service; record: dis charged for drunkenness.

Two, single, no previous service, unfamiliar with the work of the industry. One, married, three children, four years' previous service; record: good.

One, married, no children, no previous service, temporarily laid off by near-by

Of the seven hired in the above manner, one had been hit upon whose record under the circumstances would justify a rehire. Of the 143 who turn away, to curse at the company and "move on" to the next town for a repetition of the

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JOB HUNTERS OUTNUMBER THE JOBS-A MUNICIPAL EFFORT TO ALLEVIATE THE PRESENT SITUATION

same experience, there are five or six old employees in extreme need, a score and a half with dependents and long service records, and probably a score more whose names and addresses and good will would be an invaluable asset to the company at the moment of a slight business revival.

Couldn't we do better than that? We had a general rule that we would keep or rehire married men if we could, and long-service men if we could. But we hadn't half probed the problem to its roots, or really administered efficiently our beliefs.

In its simplest form the problem was: To adapt a given amount of work to a given amount of human need. We wanted to know:

What are the elements about each man applying for a job which will justify iring or rehiring.

What are the elements about each vorker on the job to be considered in eeping him there or laying him off.

This was the first step to be taken. We would then want to know just what Tork we had, and how it could be divided without injustice to the man or Prejudice to production. Lastly, how ould we help take care of the balance f the unemployed, after we had treated ith those who had, as it were, a first Teen upon our stock of work.

ess We decided on four points to be

eighed in connection with any man's dob: (1) The man's efficiency as a workean. (2) His record with the company.

3) His length of service. (4) His conilition: married or single, and number laidd dependents (number of children uner sixteen chiefly considered). Time at of work and other particulars if the pan were an applicant for work.

This was, as a rule, the order in which These points were considered. The man's ficiency-his contribution to producon-was assuredly the first consideraon. To lay off a single man who was first-class workman and put in his ace a married man with four children ho was a second-rate workman is rely bad business, and would prove in e end bad sociology as well. But the ist majority of cases dealt with among e unskilled and semi-skilled did not ill for such conflicts between the effient candidate and the needy one. notty cases turned up now and then, it with great numbers the facts needed ly to be stated to convince even the arties concerned who should retain or ho should regain the job in question. For jobs requiring special skill, a toolaker's or a die cutter's, because of the arity and importance of the man's skill, oint No. 1 could alone be considered. ut it was our conclusion that in the ajority of ordinary jobs in modern inustry it was possible to take into acount the other points without prejudice o production.

Having gathered these two sets of lata, we could from that day act with at east intelligent justice to both parties: he men to be laid off and the men to be hired. Besides our regular lists, we

kept a special "First Aid List" of desperate cases which had come to our attention, and which we filled first.

To illustrate in the concrete, here is the story of the siftings and placements of one Monday morning. Number of men applying for work, 150. Of these we discover by interview that seventy have no previous service with the company. Jobs available are so limited that we feel justified in regarding only former employees. Of the eighty former employees, fifty are single. We know of a certain number of jobs on the farms in the surrounding country, of a few in a metal cutting-up shop in town, and of a few in a local building operation. We direct the fifty to these. Of the remaining thirty, we pick the fifteen that, according to the data we have, seem to have a prior claim to the fifteen jobs available. We place them. Names and data on the other fifteen we keep on file, and tell them to report in a week if they have not already obtained employment. Information from the superintendent enables us to predict openings.

This seems as simple as the multiplication table. It appears such an obvious, in-front-of-your-nose measure. It is no more surely than a routine, common-sense practice of all employers, mere decency. Doesn't everybody do it? That's the unspeakable tragedy of it. It is mere decency, but it is unbelievably rare. It is extraordinarily simple in principle, but it isn't exactly easy. It requires a lot of daily drudgery, record taking, and interviewing. It is not important because it is complicated or profound, but because it is simple, has been tried and works, and will, if faithfully carried through, remove the acute suffering of the unemployed this fall.

Any employer who says that there is nothing he can do in the present crisis, "as long as there aren't any more orders coming in," is a liar. Any employer who says that "in general" he is trying to lay off "the single fellows and the bad workmen," and trying to "look after as many as he can," is deceiving himself and you unless you find that he has added to virtuous and vague intention a close study of his peculiar unemployment situation, and is employing a staff to persistently put over the engineering problem of making his available stock of work meet the known human need in the most efficient manner good brains can devise.

I said that after we had gathered our data on the worker who was at the job and the data on the man at the door we wanted then to know "what work we had, and how it could be divided without injustice to the worker or prejudice to production." This matter of "dividing up the work" is one that varies utterly with the peculiar conditions of production that govern in each factory. It is impossible in some places to employ one gang for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and another gang for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It would break up the smooth progress of the work in some instances, but in others it would be quite feasible. We were able in some

departments to work one gang one week, another the next, and in some cases even a third gang for the third week. Many hundreds of families were able to subsist last winter through this arrangement, and this alone. A number of employers do not grasp the desperateness of the situation even in their own plants, and therefore do not turn to such measures because they mean a slight effort of reorganization. Plans of this sort should not be matured in directors' meetings alone, but in conference with foremen, men's representatives, and production engineers.

Every employment office should be an employment exchange. With a stream of workers passing in and out, with its natural contacts with all other industrial concerns in the neighborhood, and its contacts with local institutions of all kinds, it is the natural center for employment information. The men it cannot hire it should neither "kick out" nor soothe with false promises of "jobs tomorrow," which is a common employment-office practice. It should give the best employment news it can muster, whether melancholy or fair. And surely, as Mr. Hoover suggests, it should cooperate with the private, municipal, State, and Federal employment agencies, and, if none exist in the neighborhood, unite with other concerns to create one. It is to be admitted at once that the foregoing programme is but a preliminary grappling with the whole problem of unemployment. It is merely a history of one company's effort to meet its responsibility at once; to treat the most acute and dangerous part of the disease without delay, and with the instruments any employer has at hand. It leaves a large number of men without jobs, but they tend to be either those who have forfeited them through their own misconduct or who are not in immediate need, or at least who will not by their loss bring misery upon their dependents.

Responsibility falls naturally and rightfully upon every industry for its own unemployed. The first step is that the best and most needy of these be cared for by (1) careful selection, (2) division of work, by the individual employer. The second is that the employer direct the remainder to other positions in his industrial neighborhood of which he has knowledge and co-operate with municipal, State, and Federal employment bureaus to complete the process of an efficient use of the whole existing stock of work.

This record is indeed a small matter measured against the painful totals of the country's unemployed. But if undertaken by every employer in its effects it would amount to a gigantic engineering operation in unemployment performed by common sense upon human material. It would not cut at the roots of unemployment-they lie at the foundations of our trading and economic structure-but it would carve out of existence a very measurable fraction of this winter's threatened industrial waste and human suffering.

AMALIEL PARSONS seemed to have a knack, a fatality, for getting himself into trouble. Of course he always managed to pull himself out of it again, grinning amiably from ear to ear; but, after all, this was slight comfort to his friends. They used to tell him he ought never to leave his ship and come ashore; the only safe place for him was on his quarter-deck.

Of course Gamaliel was only in his twenties in those days, and ridiculously handsome in his high white collar and black stock; and his earlier experiences on the privateer Chaser, in the adventures of 1812, had done very little towards curbing his romantic tendencies.

"You are a verdaamte jongen!" Jan Pieterszoon van den Bosch, the captain of the Dutch East Indiaman Oost Indie, from Batavia, would say to him. ways you do some foolish thing, dwaase, and make me berspire!"

"Al

tumbok lada, a stabbing dagger, clutched to her breast, watching Gamaliel.

Only when the time came, and she mistook the Dutchman for the fat and unpopular Ismail, who had given her the stolen junk as a toy, it was on him that she turned loose her fury, lest he do harm to Gamaliel!

"Nyah-lah, Ismail!" she had screamed at him. "Be off-away with you! ..." Jan Pieterszoon used to mimic her afterwards to Gamaliel until the latter blushed behind his ears.

"Nyah-lah, Ismail! Ho ho! A great imbression you make, yes, on Maimunah -berhaps because you are not fat like Ismail! Brobably she will follow you to Amerika."

"Probably you'll choke to death one of these days telling that story!" Gamaliel would scowl. at him.

Ah Fung, too, the inscrutable and excellent silk-robed merchant, had his recollections which set him chattering when he thought of them in his hong, in Foochow. Recollections dating back to the time when Gamaliel had first come to China, on one of Mr. Benjamin Moore's ships, immediately after 1812, and then later on in his own Felicity Belle, a smiling, strapping youngster of twenty-one.

Such as that senseless performance in Yeddo, where they had gone to trade with the Japanese Shogun, when they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a threatening crowd of the Daimyo Matsudaira's retainers, because Gamaliel had thought it proper to walk in his gardens and exchange romantic pleasantries with the Lady Hasu No Hana San, his daughter.

And there again, of course, Gamaliel had pulled himself out of it without lifta finger, simply because the Lady Hasu No Hana had found him very agreeable to look upon. At all events, she pretended a great many things, and sent him away with gifts, as though he had been an official envoy.

And not content with that, she had smiled very pleasantly into his eyes and said something to him which Gamaliel used to chuckle over afterwards and tease Ah Fung about.

"Omae wa suki da. I like you!" the Lady Hasu No Hana San had said. It made a good companion piece to "Nyah-lah, Ismail!"

Of course, aside from his youth, which was nothing in those days when veterans of twenty-six or twenty-seven began to think seriously of retiring from the sea, and his good looks, which he valued about as highly as a snarled-up halyard, Gamaliel had sufficient excuse, after all, for his deep-rooted romanticism.

Born in 1797, allowed to run wild in Mr. Ackley's shipyard where his father worked, his childhood years had been

filled with the touch and the smell and the sound of things that had to do with the sea. His toys were the tools with which hulls and rigging were fashioned, his chosen heroes the men who sailed blue water in saucy Yankee vessels whose only regret was that the seas were limited to seven.

"Patagonia? Cochin-China? Zanzibar? Hell, we've been there! ..."

And his picture-books were the tales which these men brought back with them from the ends of the earth, scented with spice, clinking with precious stones, tanned by winds with strange disturbing names- -monsoons, chinooks, pamperos. simooms, harmat tans. . . .

Winds encountered on voyages in such ships as those of Mr. Elias Derby, with his fleet of forty, who as early as 1784 had nosed his way into St. Petersburg, and five years later had flown the Stars and Stripes for the first time in the ports of Bombay and Calcutta. And those of Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Peabody, and Mr. William Gray, owner of thirty-six vessels sailing out of Salem.

Voyages such as that of the Columbia out of Boston, around the Horn to the northwest coast of North America, and thence to China, and home around the Cape of Good Hope. A little adventurer of two hundred and thirteen tons, the first to carry the American flag around the globe. And those of Mr. Girard's ships from Philadelphia to the OrientMr. Girard, who had once been a cabin boy. And that first one from New York straight to Canton, in 1785, seven men and two boys in the eighty-ton sloop Enterprise.

Voyages which had started, some of them, from Mr. Ackley's own shipyard, like that of the Manhattan for China and the East Indies, in 1796. A giant of some six hundred tons, requiring all of the blue-water sailormen that could be gathered together along the waterfront to handle her!

ND such tales they were that came floating back to Gamaliel from the distant horizons, on the tongues of men who had seen piracy, and signed on in their thousands in the coastwise tar erns to man the privateers of the Revolution! Tales of uncharted oceans and unexpected coast-lines, fabulous cargoes drawn from unsuspected rivers-the days of Tyre and Genoa and Venice re turned again to gild the figureheads of fearless Yankee ships.

Adventures, so they called the shares owned by the masters and mates in the profits of these ships; and to each one came his full share of adventure!

To that twenty-three-year-old Viking, Master Mariner Richard Cleveland, for instance, who in 1797 had sailed from

di

Salem in his own ship bound for Arabia. In Havre the possibilities of another adventure had attracted him, and he was off for the Cape of Good Hope, three months at sea in the twenty-three-ton Caroline with a crew of two men, two boys, and a cook.

Having disposed of his boat, he journeyed to Batavia and Canton, whence he set sail in a cutter for the northwest shore of North America. A venture involving a mutiny in the China Sea and two months of constant fighting with the Indians of Norfolk Sound, to say nothing of the rugged hostility of the Oregon coast, before he returned to China with his cargo of furs.

"... and then where did he go?" "Then?

cutta...."

Oh, then he went to Cal

To Calcutta, yes, and a twenty-fiveton boat for Mauritius, and a cargo of coffee for Copenhagen. And then in 8-1 Hamburg he must needs purchase the Leila Byrd and sail for Valparaiso, and on to Mexico and California, fighting his way in and out of closed Spanish ports; then to Norfolk Sound again for another load of furs for Canton.

TOTE

Yes, he was thirty years old when he Creturned to Salem, with a fortune of el over fifty thousand dollars, having sailed G twice around the globe in seven years. Adventure on the rolling seas, along

d the beaches of three continents, in the lagoons of tropical islands, among pirates, and merchants, and kings, yellow and brown and black.

1 of smallpox at Whampoa. Sold as a

13

slave in Algiers.

coast of Japan.

with natives"

...

Drowned off the Killed in a skirmish Epitaphs such as these for the Argonauts of Gamaliel's childhood, days.

But of course with him the epitaphs went in at one ear and out again at the other, while the tales remained, and the glamour of their setting and the music of their songs:

The wind is free and we're bound for sea,

Heave away cheerily ho ho!

The lasses are waving to you and to
me,

As off to the southward we go-0,
As off to the southward we go.

Sing, my lads, cheerily,
Heave, my lads, cheerily,
Heave away cheerily oh oh!
For gold that we prize
And for sunnier skies,
Away to the southward we go!

We want sailors bold, who can work
for their gold,

Heave away cheerily ho ho!
And stand a good wetting without
catching cold,

As off to the southward we go-0,
As off to the southward we go.
Sing, my lads, cherrily,

Heave, my lads, cheerily,
Heave away cheerily oh oh!
For gold that we prize
And for sunnier skies,

Away to the southward we go!

And the rollicking one about the maidens and the bottles and all the rest of it:

the maiden, oh, the bottle, oh,

A pipe of good tobacco, oh, So early in the morning, The sailor loves all these heigh ho! A bottle of spirit, a maiden fair, A plug of good tobacco, oh, So early in the morning, These are the sailor's loves, heigh ho! That peculiarly enchanting one also concerning the Golden Vanitee:

then up spake a sailor, who'd
just returned from sea,

Oh, I was aboard of the Golden Vani-
tee

When she was held in chase by a
Spanish piratee,

And we sank her in the Lowlands low.
Lowlands, Lowlands,

We sank her in the Lowlands low.
For we had aboard us a little cabin
boy,

Who said, What will you give me if
that ship I do destroy?

The captain said, I'll give my child,
she is my pride and joy,
If you sink her in the Lowlands low.
Lowlands, Lowlands,

You sink her in the Lowlands low.
The boy took an auger and plunged
into the tide,

And bravely swam until he reached
the rascal pirate's side,

He climbed aboard and went below,
by none was he espied,
And he sank her in the Lowlands low.
Lowlands, Lowlands,

He sank her in the Lowlands low. In Gamaliel's estimation this heroic cabin boy ranked well up beside Gen

eral Washington, and perhaps even Captain Richard Cleveland, and to be such a cabin boy appeared to him as the summit of all earthly and watery ambition.

And in due time, when he was fifteen years old, he became such a cabin boy, or perhaps even more of one, on the privateer Chaser in 1812, and sailed through four years of romance as finely spun as any of his sailormen's tales.

T

HEN after that it was China, and Japan, and all of the golden Orient, in spite of the brown eyes of Miss Felicity Moore, soon to become Mrs. Gamaliel Parsons. It could not have been otherwise.

And always in trouble, and out of it again, grinning amiably from ear to ear, "all same clocodile," as Ah Fung described it.

"Almachtig!" Jan Pieterszoon van den Bosch would roar at him. "Stay on your quarter-deck, yes! Always in trouble when ashore you go, dwaase jongen!"

But even on his own quarter-deck it seemed that Gamaliel was unable to keep himself out of mischief. And it was no longer a question of the impudent Felicity Belle either, but aboard of his stately Hooglie, some ten years after that escapade at Parangambalang.

Gamaliel was in his thirties now, and his little son Matthew was growing up like a bean-stalk back there in the little house near the Bowling Green, but for all that he had found it impossible to tear himself away from his enchanted Orient. So he had built the Hooglie, a very sharp vessel for her day, and indeed a very wet one, modeled after the slender

lines of the earlier Baltimore privateers which he had known so well.

She was the pride of his life, and van den Bosch welcomed her appearance with smiles of relief for all his doubts as to her construction.

"Now you haf a fine ship," he said, "if she stay afloat. It is a great re sponsibility. Berhaps you try and be have yourself, yes?"

And indeed Gamaliel did behave himself, conscious of his dignity and increasing years, very much the American merchant navigator, in his pongee suit and his white hat, going about in his gig with the spotlessly clad Chinese crew. But for all that, he could not manage to keep out of trouble. No, not even on his own quarter-deck.

I

"

T was on a late afternoon in May, of the year 1831, that he stepped into Ah Fung's hong in Foochow from a sedan chair and handed his hat to a pigtailed boy. Ah Fung, who had not known of the Hooglie's arrival in port, came forward to meet him with a fluttering of silken robes and sounded a gong for refreshments.

"You vely welcome!" he bowed. "Hsi keh lai liao!"

From a chair in the coolest spot in the room a ponderous mass of white duck arose vociferously with outstretched hands.

"Heisa!" exclaimed this mass, which proved itself to be the fat little Dutchman from Batavia. "It is Tuan Parsons! In the Formosa Channel I sight you, yes?"

It was very

"I didn't see you. rough." "No, dwaase, under the water you cannot see. But I shpy three masts and enough sail for a fleet in that wind moving upon the water, and I say down below it is Tuan Parsons and his ship. Some day you drown, yes."

"I dare say," Gamaliel replied, and dropped into a chair. He was quite obviously worried about something, and in no mood for pleasantries. Ah Fung and the Dutchman eyed him in silence for a moment, and then the latter turned to his host.

"He has done something," he said. "Again the jongen is in trouble. I can smell it!"

"Him flowning, all same angly joss," remarked the Chinaman. "The sight of fliends is no pleasure to his eyes."

"You have been ashore again somewhere, ." they accused him.

"No, I haven't been ashore anywhere," Gamaliel told them. "Except on business."

They waited for him to continue, but he fell silent again, staring at them absent-mindedly. Jan Pieterszoon winked at Ah Fung.

"We will talk of affairs, yes, perkara," he said to him. "When he is ready he will tell."

"After many cloudy days the sun comes out again," murmured Ah Fung. "We will talk of pelkala. . . ."

For quite a long time they spoke, under the swinging punkahs, while Ah

AMALIEL smiled at them both and shuffled his feet.

"I have adopted a baby," he announced finally.

"Heusch!" exclaimed van den Bosch, nearly leaping from his chair. "A baby -you haf adopted a baby?"

"You go clazy?" chattered Ah Fung. "What kind of a baby is it you adopt?" "A Chinese baby," said Gamaliel. "About a year old, I think."

"You think?" roared the Dutchman. "Almachtig! Do you not know? Where did you get it, this baby? Ashore you haf been again, yes. . . ."

"No," Gamaliel explained. "I haven't been ashore, I tell you. I found the baby."

"Where do you find it, then, if not ashore?"

"I found it in the Formosa Channel." "Ei...."

"That's what I said, in the Formosa Channel, in a sampan."

Captain van den Bosch was staring open mouthed at Gamaliel.

"In a sampan!" he exclaimed. "In the Formosa Channel? Het is niet mogelijk -that is not possible!"

"Baby no can make him sail sampan," objected Ah Fung. "Not vely much."

"Well, it's so, just the same," insisted Gamaliel. "There was a storm-guess you ran into it too, Jan?"

"Pelhaps him evil spilit," suggested Ah Fung. "You put him back vely quick, plevent make him dlagon, fly away with ship."

"It's not a flying baby," said Gamaliel. "And it's not a him either." "So? It is a meisje?" "Yes, it is a girl baby."

Ah Fung shook his head solemnly. "That is vely bad," he announced. "Shih dzai ko wu! Female baby not gleat shakings. Make him vely good dlowning."

"Baik!" laughed van den Bosch. "Berhaps on the junk they are tired of the baby. The father, he say, 'It is a girl, I will kill her, yes,' but the mother she say, 'Wait, I will send her away for Tuan Parsons to find.' So it was on the junk, ho ho!"

"That's it, no doubt," scowled Gamaliel. "And now I have to play Pharaoh's daughter to a Chinese Moses! Never mind what it means, Ah Fung, it would take too long to explain. . . .

But the Dutchman understood; at all events, he shook all over like a plate of jelly and laughed until he turned purple in the face.

"Ho ho! Tuan Parsons-many dwaase thing you haf done, yes; but now a Chinese girl baby you haf! In China will no one take her, there are too many meisje babies. To Amerika with you she must go, yes. Heisa! It will be difficult to explain to Mevrouw Parsons how you find her in the Formosa Channel!" "Oh, go to the devil! . . .

But it was true, just the same. Through no fault of his own to be sure, except his fatal knack for literally bumping into trouble, Gamaliel was now the possessor of a one-year-old Chinese girl baby. A possession which he prized about as highly as a split topgallantsail, and of which he stood as much chance of ridding himself in unfeministic China as a basket full of scorpions.

THE

HEY went out to the Hooglie the next day to look at the baby crawling around on the quarter-deck, a fat little brownie somewhat incongruously attired in one of Gamaliel's night-shirts, cut down to fit its stumpy length.

The baby paid no attention to the visitors except to howl lugubriously at Jan Pieterszoon, whereupon it attached itself firmly to Gamaliel's leg and crowed at the world.

"Always with the ladies you make an imbression," chuckled Jan. "This time it is because you are not fat like me. 'Nyah-lah, Ismail,' yes?"

"I can't turn the thing loose," Gamaliel complained. "I saved it once, and I've got to provide for it somehow. And I won't put it ashore to starve or be thrown into the river. Doesn't somebody here want a nice girl baby? Ah Fung, don't you want a daughter?"

It seemed that Ah Fung did not. "Me vely solly," he explained. "Thlee sons I have in my house, not wishing female baby, thank you vely much. Him not pletty baby."

"Neither was Moses, probably," growled