pestilence swept off in the State each year one-third of the animals? The value of the crops in Wisconsin each year is about $148,359,216, according to the 1910 census. What if some event destroyed nearly one-fifth of the crops of that State each year?

Seventy-five per cent of the distress which comes to the Charity Organization Society of New York City is caused immediately by sickness.1

Both the preventable and unpreventable sickness and death affect the income of the families concerned. The large percentage of this premature death by preventable sickness is ground for hope that this cause of poverty and dependency will yield itself to social measures. 2. Adverse Industrial Conditions Such as Disease, Accident, and Fatigue Due to Improperly Managed Factory or Store. What was just said applies to conditions in society in general which affect the income of a family. Now let us look at the conditions in industry alone. Conditions under which people work affect their health and vitality and thus their efficiency. What are some of the working conditions which adversely affect them and thus their income?

1. Accidents. In 1917 there were 53,544 deaths from industrial accidents in the registration area of the United States. This was a decrease from the previous year of 6,500. Since the registration area of the United States comprises only 70 per cent of its territory, it is apparent that there must have been about 75,000 deaths from accident.2

As to industrial accidents alone, a special committee of the National Association of Manufacturers, in a recent report, estimates that there are 500,000 workers annually incapacitated or killed in the United States, half of whom might be saved by such preventive measures as were in general use in the industries in Germany before the War; and that the unnecessary loss to the nation from such accidents is not less than $125,000,000 annually.3

2. Disease and Death. The death rate in occupations is higher than the rate for the whole population of the same age group. A study made by the Bureau of Labor of the United States shows that comparing the death rate of the Metropolitan and Prudential Insur

1

2

Devine, Misery and Its Causes, New York, 1909, p. 54.

Falls account for 14.8 per 100,000 population; railway accidents, 11.5; burns, 9.1; auto accidents and injuries, 8.9; drowning, 7.4; mine accidents, and injuries resulting in death, 3.5; injuries by vehicles other than railways, street cars and autos, 3.1; street cars. 3; machinery, 2.8.

3 Massachusetts' Report of the Commission on the Cost of Living, Boston, 1910, p. 222.

ance Companies insured workers with that of the general population of the same age groups, at ages of 15 and over, the male rate is 5 per cent higher than that of the general population, probably because these insured persons do not include many of the professional classes or of the better paid and skilled workers. "The maximum difference between the population and industrial insurance mortality rates is found in the age period 35 to 44, when the rate for males is 47 per cent higher than the corresponding rate for males in the population. ... The higher rates for the insured persons may well be expected in view of the general and special hazards to which working men and women of the country are exposed." 1

It is difficult to arrive at the amount of poverty caused by preventable death and disease in workingmen's families apart from other families. Fisher estimates the cost for illness and death in workingmen's families alone in the United States as $460,000,000, or, including loss of wages and care of the sick and burial of the dead, it amounts to $960,000,000.2

Naturally we should expect that the amount of preventable death and disease would be greater in the workingmen's families than in the general population.

How much economic efficiency is reduced by unwholesome conditions in the factory and in the homes of workingmen we have no means of computing.

3. Fatigue. The British Health of Munitions Workers' Committee made a study of conditions in the munition factories of Great Britain in order to ascertain the effects of the conditions therein on the output of the workers. It throws light on the relation of fatigue to efficiency and to health, and thus on the conditions of poverty and pauperism. "Here it is only necessary to draw attention to the primary and fundamental importance of maintaining a high state of health in the industrial worker. For without health there is no energy, and without energy there is no output. . . . Moreover, health bears a direct relation to contentment, alertness and the absence of lassitude and boredom, conditions bearing directly upon industrial efficiency," and they might have added, upon the problem of poverty.3 According to this report, under war conditions about 40 per cent

'Causes of Death by Occupation, Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Whole No. 207, Appendix A.

'Fisher, Report on National Vitality, pp. 117-120.

*Industrial Health and Efficiency, Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 249, P. 44.

of the women exhibited definite signs of fatigue. The report adds, however, that this percentage does not represent the full number of those who are fatigued because much early fatigue is latent and objectively unrecognizable, because the women most seriously affected tend to drop out and therefore are not counted. Moreover, some women who knew they were fatigued were unwilling to subject themselves to examination. Consequently, only definite and obvious fatigue which could be recognized by superficial methods of examination was detected. "It is evident that while, physiologically, fatigue may be measured by a diminution in the capacity for doing work, it may easily increase to such a degree that it affects the health of the worker." 1

"The committee takes the view that to use up or damage its women by overstrain in factory work is one of the most serious and farreaching forms of human waste which a nation can practise or permit." 2

Concerning the effect of factory overstrain on the men, the report says, ". . . the workers become exhausted and take a rest; sickness tends to increase, at any rate among the older men and those of weak constitution. . . . The fatigue entailed increases the temptation of men to indulge in the consumption of alcohol; they are too tired to eat and therefore seek a stimulant."

3

In the same report mention is made of the study by Professor Loveday on "Conditions of Lost Time" in these munition factories. The report says: "In the first place, he points out that the proportion of lost time that is due to sickness and other unavoidable causes is, as a rule, greatly underestimated in factory records, and the proportion due to slackness consequently overestimated. In the second place, he expresses the view that long hours, much overtime, and especially Sunday labor, exert a pernicious effect upon health, particularly of persons occupied in heavy trades." 4

Says the report: "You will find,' writes Sir James Paget, 'that fatigue has a larger share in the promotion or transmission of disease than any other single casual condition you can name.'”

"The influence of fatigue on accidents to women was strikingly

Industrial Health and Efficiency, Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 249, p. 50.

2 Ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., p. 66.

Ibid., p. 80.

5

Ibid., p. 129.

shown at the fuse factory when the operatives were working a 12-hour day, or 75 hours a week. The women's accidents were two and a half times more numerous than in the subsequent 10-hour day period, but the men's accidents were not affected." 1

The British studies in the munition factories show without a doubt that long hours and unusually heavy work, unsuited to the capacity of the individual employed, result in fatigue and that fatigue results not only in lowered production but in lost time and sickness. Lost time and sickness directly and loss of tone indirectly result in lowering. the productivity and therefore the income of the worker.2

"3

3. Unemployment. Says Mr. Frank B. Sargent, of the United States Bureau of Labor, "The amount of unemployment reported at the beginning of the period covered by the table was very high, and during the four years from 1897 to 1900, the reported percentage of unemployment fell below 10 per cent only once. From 1901 to 1906 it was below 10 per cent at the end of each September, and it was above that mark at the end of March, except in 1906. Since September, 1906, it has not fallen below 10 per cent." In an investigation in Massachusetts the percentage of the labor organization members out of work from 1908 to 1911 varied from 4.98 per cent for the quarter ending September 30, 1909, to 17.9 per cent for the quarter ending March 31, 1908. Both these findings probably understate the amount of unemployment because, "union men capable of performing high-grade skilled labor are much more likely to be employed than unskilled workmen, and that therefore the percentage idle among union men is much lower than among industrial workers as a whole.” 5 The American Federationist has published data showing the amount of unemployment among the members of the American Federation of Labor from 1902 to 1909. It says, "It is noteworthy that the amount of unemployment as here reported has at no time, even during the industrial depression of 1907-8, reached 10 per cent, and several times it has gone below I per cent."

'Industrial Health and Efficiency, Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 249, p. 139.

'Hours, Fatigue and Health in the British Munition Factories, Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 221; Industrial Efficiency and Fatigue in British Munition Factories, Bulletin, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 230. 'Bulletin U. S. Bureau of Labor, No. 109, p. 19.

*Ibid., p. 24.

Ibid., p. 24. 'Ibid., p. 25.

"In March, 1908, 7.8 per cent of the wage-earners in the cities of Rhode Island were unemployed.1

"During the best years coal mines are idle about one-fourth of the time, and both anthracite and bituminous mines have often averaged less than 200 days each year. The amount of enforced idleness varied, therefore, on the assumption that there are 300 working days in the year, from 22 to 43 per cent of the working time of employees annually in the bituminous mines, and from 23.7 to 50 per cent, disregarding the year 1902, in anthracite mines." 2

In the United States as a whole the Census figures show that of all persons engaged in gainful occupations 22.3 per cent were unemployed at some time during the census year. (1900.) 3 Of all employed for gain in 1900,

10.9 per cent were unemployed from 1 to 3 months, and 8.8 per cent from 4 to 6 months. *

In the investigation of 25,440 families, in 1901, to study the cost of living, covering 124,108 persons in 33 states, composed of persons with wages and salaries not exceeding $1200 per year, figures concerning unemployment were given covering 24,402 of these families. 49.81 per cent of the heads of families were idle during some portion of the year. During the year their unemployment averaged 9.43 weeks.5

These figures, while not satisfactory as a measure of the burden unemployment places upon the worker and his family, give us some indication that in those families whose incomes are only just enough for a decent standard of living if they work all the time, unemployment will mean want and the first step to poverty if not to pauperism.

Later studies made either by the Bureau of Labor or under its direction by the Metropolitan Insurance Company showed that in 16 cities of the East and Middle West during March and April, 1915, in 401,548 families investigated containing 1,694,895 persons, in which there were 647,394 wage earners, 11.5 per cent were out of work, or of the families canvassed 15 per cent had one or more members out of work."

4. Adverse Surroundings of Children. The causes of poverty and pauperism go farther back than the circumstances which surround