or out-of-work benefits to maintain the necessary labor reserves in decency and efficiency.

We come, then, to our original proposition that unemployment, as it presents itself to us today, is not a problem for theoretical discussion, but a problem for political, legislative, and administrative action. Why continue discussion of problems that have been theoretically solved, so far as they can be solved until the solutions are tested by actual administrative experiment?

In the United States we have become so enamored of discussion of unemployment that we are loth to give it up. Report after report comes forth, books and articles are written, speech after speech is made, all reiterating, more or less accurately, the same conclusions and the same general recommendations. Facts and statistics are piled high, ordinarily without analysis, and writers continue to complain of the deplorable lack of information. But when the material is classified and the details mastered and analyzed, the conclusions are ever the same.

One reason for this is that it is always interesting to recite the experiences of the unemployed, to appeal to the imagination with statements about armies of two million or four million wage-earners out of work. There is something dramatic about a workless army of men trudging the streets and tramping the roads vainly in search of work. That the system of industry is unable to employ all its workers is such a challenge to society that writers and speakers never tire of reiterating it; the public must be interested in a fact of such vital importance. Agitators and reformers play upon it. Charity workers make it the basis of appeals for funds. Political parties find it effective campaign material. If you must get the public ear, here is something dramatic and appealing. It is not so interesting to center attention on practical remedies and details of administration.

Again, it is easy to say: "Establish labor exchanges, they are the monuments which serve as pinnacles of observation, revealing the shortest cuts between supply and demand.'" But it is not so easy, in fact it is a dull and difficult task, to erect these monuments so that they will actually stand up and serve the whole community as pinnacles of observation. It is a most

dramatic cry to demand public work and not charity for the unemployed; but it is quite another thing to get the funds with which to prosecute the public work and it is still more difficult to conduct it so that it will really be work, and not merely a fiction to hide charitable relief. It easy to say that we must have vocational education and vocational guidance for the youth of the land, but what a task it is to remodel the school system to meet the demands of an ever changing industrial life, and what a responsibility to assume to direct and place a child in a position that involves choosing a career!

So we have our economists today continuing the same analysis of unemployment, government commissions recommending the same remedies, social workers and reformers repeating the same facts, picturing the same evils and urging the same reforms. And all the while very little of a permanent, constructive, and remedial nature is accomplished. Our public employment bureaus have in the main been crude and ineffective. Their work, until very recently, has been quite primitive and their methods unbusinesslike; their main activity is with the lowest grades of unskilled and casual laborers and the statistics they publish are often valueless and unreliable.'

For a whole century every industrial depression has seen scores of experiments with public work for the unemployed, yet no systematic policy is established, and invariably the funds spent have been merely the cost of maintaining the fiction that work and not relief was given, accompanied by the demoralization that usually results from such a policy.'

And now the movements for vocational guidance and unemployment insurance, of more recent origin, threaten to repeat the same history. Advocates content themselves with proving the theoretical soundness of these propositions, repeating the necessity of the measures, and urging in general terms that the

'C. B. Barnes: Report of an Investigation of Public Employment Offices. Proceedings of the American Association of Public Employment Offices, Indianapolis meeting, 1914. See also "The Movement for Public Labor Exchanges," Journal of Political Economy, July, 1915, p. 707, for an account of the recent improvements. 'Relief Works in the United States, published in the Quarterly Journal of the International Association on Unemployment, vol. 3, no. 1, 1913.

government adopt them, with little regard for the administrative machinery necessary to insure their success.

The immediate need in the way of study of the problem of unemployment is not causes, effects, or extent, but detailed methods of effectively organizing, conducting, and administering public employment offices, public work for the unemployed, systems of vocational guidance and unemployment insurance, and uniting them all into one comprehensive plan for preventing unemployment. For the rest, action is needed-intelligent use of publicity and manipulation of political situations directed to compel the parties to adopt such a program, to enact it as a whole or in substantial parts into legislation, and to create the essential administrative machinery and the necessary safeguards that will insure successful operation, or, at least, trial under favorable circumstances.

Unemployment in the United States today presents itself as a problem of preparing a comprehensive program for the prevention of unemployment, of outlining the laws with the essential provisions necessary to establish governmental responsibility, of devising the administrative machinery, methods and policies by which the action of the government may be made practical and effective, and thus starting the country toward the final solution of the problem. The present paper is introductory to such a study.

TOLEDO UNIVERSITY.

W. M. LEISERSON.

T

SINGLE-TAX MOVEMENT IN OREGON

HERE is perhaps no state in the Union where the campaign for adoption of the single-tax in some form has

been carried on with more vigor and tenacity than in the state of Oregon. Several factors have here given vitality to the single-tax movement. Chief among these is the presence of a small but aggressive body of men thoroughly imbued with the philosophy of Henry George. The general development of the Pacific Northwest, the progress of agriculture and the rapid growth of cities have resulted in a marked increase in land values with consequent profit to speculators. Idle tracts of land suitable for agricultural purposes, congressional grants reserved from use by railways, extensive holdings of timber and valuable water-power sites all gave point to the single-taxer's argument and supplied illustrations of what he is pleased to call the evils of "land monopoly." Since the adoption of the initiative and referendum in 1902, a system of direct legislation has made it easy to amend the constitution and secure submission of single-tax measures. Danger of conflict with the organic law of the state might be avoided by casting a measure in the form of a constitutional amendment, and a bare majority is sufficient to ratify. This important connection between the initiative and the single-tax movement in the state cannot be made too prominent. It is a matter of common knowledge that W. S. U'Ren, in devising the Oregon System, was actuated more by a desire to secure popular endorsement of his singletax program than to realize popular control of legislation generally.

But the perseverance of single-tax leaders, even in the face of discouraging votes, has been due in no small degree to liberal contributions from the Fels Fund Commission. It has been charged by the opposition that many paid advocates of single-tax were sustained more by profit than principle. At any rate Joseph Fels recognized in Oregon a suitable field for popular" education" on the principles of taxation, always with

a view of course to the ultimate adoption of a tax on land value alone. It is estimated that at two elections of 1910-12 contributions from the Fels Fund to Oregon totaled $51,956-a campaign fund of no inconsiderable size.

Oregon experience therefore affords an opportunity for study of different types of tax measures framed by orthodox followers of Henry George but always modified somewhat to suit local conditions or at times strangely disguised to humor prejudices of those not fully converted to the Georgian philosophy but thoroughly dissatisfied with the existing system of taxation. Four successive campaigns also supply abundant material for the study on the one hand of attempts at popularizing the theory of rent and the doctrine of unearned increment, and on the other hand of the efforts to meet these arguments by appeal to economic principle or deep-rooted prejudice with regard to property rights.

I

Although the way was open for the submission of measures to direct vote as early as 1904, no act with single-tax tendencies was referred until the general election of 1908. Steps were taken to prepare and circulate the measure early in January and the movement was backed by a group of advocates who took the name of the Oregon Tax Reform Association.' The measure finally agreed upon was cast in the form of a constitutional amendment and aimed to exempt dwelling houses and improvements on farms, city dwellings, manufacturing plant, tools and machinery. It will be seen at once that this measure falls far short of radical single-tax. It did not aim to lay the burden entirely on unimproved value. Business blocks, stock in merchandise, rolling stock and equipment of railways, corporation securities of all kinds and many other forms of personal property, tangible and intangible, were left subject to regular levies. The act was defended as a " departure in the direction of the single-tax," and in the campaign which followed arguments on both sides were not confined to the merits and drawbacks of the specific measure, but the theoretical justice of

1 Oregonian, January 11, 1908.