few years of peace. Therefore it is all the more necessary for the British in their reconstruction plans to take the unemployment bull by the horns.

Unemployment, however, is not merely a problem of the numbers of the workers as against the number of jobs. The delicate human problem is to bring the two together and fit the one into the other. Here is the basis of the real British reconstruction plans. "We used to have the old kinds of lost man, woman, or youngster in our industrial life," said the secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions to me. "They were the untrained, the unfit, the unplaced. the uneducated. You can call them the normal unfortunate. We had them before the war, and we British, just like the rest of the world, were shirking our job by doing nothing much for them. Now we have the victims of the dislocation of war-the injured man, the woman munition worker, the children who had been absorbed in war work, the soldier who has lost his industrial skill or failed to have training. Call them the abnormal."

The Abnormals! First there are the boys and girls. The British Ministry of Reconstruction has been frank in its opinion of the obligation the Government owes to the boy and girl who were needed for the home work of war. The secretary of the council pointed out the physical and moral undermining which came to juveniles sucked into industrial and Government work. Their training has been neglected. War work has left them out of work and restless. In some school districts of England during periods of the war one out of every ten school children was employed each day when not attending lessons! Between 1914 and 1917 the number of employed children increased by more than 350,000 and more than a quarter of a million of girls went into industrial and Government occupations for the first time. In ten cities picked at random the policecourt juvenile cases rose from 10,000 to 16,000. These are indications of the way the war called boys and girls to labor and the effect these unnatural conditions brought upon them.

Peace suddenly began to pull their jobs from under their feet. The British plans of reconstruction therefore had to provide plans to stop the flow of more children, as the younger grew to the age when they could enter industry. They have had to provide also for taking care of those who had been drawn in by war already and flung out by peace. About 50,000 juveniles are drawing unemployment maintenance; the boys between fourteen and eighteen thrown out of work get about three and a half dollars a week; girls receive about three dollars.

Seeing the Juveniles Through

THE HE real problem, however, is not solved by this temporary unemployment donation. It is characteristic of British reconstruction that studies are being made to repair the harm done to children by war work. More than 160 "juvenile centers," as they call them, have been established. Checks have been put upon the sudden discharge of boys and girls from their jobs. The juvenile centers conduct a labor exchange to find suitable places for out-of-work youngsters. But the real endeavor is to get back into educational and vocational training the boy or girl who has gone unripened from home to factory and office; there is a maintenance allowance for those who can be induced to take courses.

Here is a typical case. B is sixteen years old. He entered a munition plant two years ago. Because of the shortage of labor the factory methods and machinery had been adapted to a greater division and more specialized work for each employee. The skilled worker was replaced by the "automatic" laborer-the laborer who does one set of motions. B could fill this job. But wages went abnormally high. B was getting about 50 shillings a week. He had earned only 7 shillings when he had been engaged as an apprentice learning a trade.

His father has gone to war; he feels a new freedom and new independence. He says to his uncle who is a laborer: "Don't interfere with me. You can talk when you can earn as much as I earn." He works on night work at times. His average day is twelve hours on speeded production. Suddenly

peace closes the munition plant. B is thrown out on the world. He is fit for no trade. He is insolent and sullen. He will take no job at less than 40 shillings.

The British, however, say to this boy: "We are still responsible for you; we will see you through." The "Dislocated" Women

THE condition of women is more serious in the number of individuals affected. How many women are there who are threatened now with unemployment after having entered industry for the first time during the war? There are more than a million and a half! This does not include volunteer workers, nor a large class which was created by women undertaking to run their husbands' businesses while the husbands wore trench helmets in France; it does not include women in the professions, nor war-corps women, nor women police nor women engaged in forestry and agriculture. In April, 1918, there were half a million new women workers in industries, nearly as many in commerce, nearly 200,000 in Government work, nearly 100,000 at work on trains, ships, and street railways. Nearly 200,000 of the number had never known any labor except sweeping, cooking, and laundry work in their own homes or the homes of others.

The total number of women workers, new and old, in 1918, was nearly 5,000,000. Women had become 37 per cent of the total number of human beings employed. Of the women employed nearly a third were each filling some man's shoes. And the man, unless he has been killed, has come back or will come back.

"Take our essential industries," a large employer told me. "Look over the pay rolls. The increase in women workers runs all the way from 2 per cent to 635 per cent. Or look at it in another way. Here are Government figures showing a list of ten typical occupations in mines, quarries, industries, transportation, and public service. The decrease in the number of males is from 25 per cent to 40 per cent. Most of them will come back for their jobs."

After all, however, it is the men who furnish the problem of greatest magnitude. A gigantic task of "resettlement of men," as the British call it, is being undertaken by the Reconstruction and the Labor Ministries. Two great classes must be fitted to jobs -one is composed of the industrial workers who have been in munition work; the other is the horde of returning soldiers.

The work of resettlement of both these classes, which number some millions, is not finished by the extension of the employment-exchange organization. Nor will it be completed by the advance of railway fares to relocate laborers. Nor is the problem solved by the "carrying" of unemployed by the national Unemployment Insurance Act, which covers some two millions, and the Munitions Act, under which probably a million and a half are covered. It is estimated by the reconstruction experts that nearly ten million workers are still uninsured against being out of work. The unemployment donation only softens, it does nothing to cure, the dislocation of men and jobs. Nor does the proposal that notice of at least a week should be made a legal obligation of the employer. These are all temporizing expedients.

The true reconstruction problem is in fitting the man to the job and the job to the man.

"The aim we have is to resettle in peace work the human being who has been engaged in war work," say the Labor Ministry and the Reconstruction Ministry, "and to resettle the soldier and sailor in peace employment. It is even more. The war has shown us that before we were so rudely shaken up we were blind to the possibility of making a more intelligent and better adapted worker."

This means dealing with humanity in great masses, but it means also dealing with human beings, not as so many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of a commodity, but as individuals. In this there is a forecast of a new sense of responsibility to recognize that the efficiency of labor and the ultimate welfare of a people require examination of individuals by microscope rather than of masses by telescope.

The resettlement of soldiers and sailors has brought out the need of dealing (Continued on page 30)