THE CABINET: Not So Grave

Secretary of Labor James John Davis began a fresh week's work by journeying up to the Senate with something it had been expecting from him. Handing some papers to Vice President Dawes, he explained that they contained a report on unemployment in the U. S. as requested lately in the maiden speech of Senator Wagner of New York (TIME March 12). With the air of a man patting a pretty good bond on the back Secretary Davis said that while unemployment is "serious" it is "not so extensive or so grave as the estimates which have been generally circulated."

The figure "circulated" by Senator Wagner was 4,000,000 workers out of work. Secretary Davis' figure was 1,874,050. This figure which included voluntary idleness (coal strikers etc.) had been arrived at by subtracting the estimated number of persons now earning wages and salaries, from the number of earners in 1925, a year not noted for unemployment. Making no allowance for an increase in this U. S. working population since 1925, the figures suggested that for each worker now out of a job, there are 12 that have jobs.

Factors mentioned as having contributed to a current "shrinkage of employment" were the Mississippi and New England floods, Florida's hurricane, the bituminous "disturbance," temporary factory shutdowns.