Excerpt from A Practical Program for the Prevention of Unemployment in America The time is past when the problem of unemployment could be disposed of either by ignoring it, as was the practice until recent years in America, or by attributing it to mere laziness and inefficiency. We are beginning to recognize that the causes of unemployment are not so much individual and due to the shiftlessness of "won't-works" as social and inherent in our present method of industrial organization. It is important that those who are aiming at the prevention of unemployment in America should never forget that it is a problem continually with us, in good seasons as well as in bad seasons. Occasional crises, with their sympathetic demands for temporary relief, should not blind us to the need for a constructive program. In the meantime the community, as a result of its past neglect to adopt some energetic constructive policy on unemployment, is being constantly confronted with an army of idle workers whose distress, which becomes conspicuous with the approach of bitter weather, demands, and, according to the analysis here presented, deserves adequate relief. Much unemployment is due to irregularity of industrial operations over which the workers have no control. Periodic abnormal excess of labor supply over labor demand is caused by the fluctuations of industry, which in its present disorganized form makes necessary constant reserves waiting to answer calls when they come. Hundreds of thousands more of workers are needed in good years than in bad years, and in each industry many more are needed in the busy season than in the slack season. Furthermore, in almost every business, special calls arise for more workers to be taken on for a few weeks, a few days or even a few hours. The reserves necessary to meet these cyclical, seasonal or casual demands should be reduced to a minimum. Industry must be regularised. Much unemployment, also, is caused by the lack of efficient means of transferring workers smoothly and rapidly from job to job. Public employment exchanges must be established. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.