Unemployed

Members of the House of Commons cried "Hear, Hear!" approvingly last week as Minister of Labor Sir Arthur Herbert Steel-Maitland declared: "I believe it is a fact that there are more workers unemployed in the U. S. than in Great Britain. . . . Although no official statistics on the subject of unemployment in the U. S. are issued by the U. S. Government, it appears to be generally accepted by those competent to form an opinion that out of 12,000,000 workers engaged in manufacturing and industry in the U. S. 1,500,000 are unemployed. . . . Our own unemployment figure has just sunk to 978,000, the lowest since 1921."

In Washington, Acting Commissioner of Labor Statistics Charles E. Baldwin declared: "We [the U. S. Department of Labor] do not know and nobody knows how many persons there are out of employment [in the U. S.]." Mr. Baldwin explained that the Bureau of Labor Statistics computes monthly "an unemployment index which shows the trend of employment, that is, whether the number employed is increasing or decreasing." The latest (April) report of this nature by the Department of Labor declares: "The level of employment in April, 1927 was 2.4% lower than in April, 1926, and pay roll totals were .6% lower."