The southern group shows a better stability rate than the northern group. The southern group also shows a decided increase in employment stability during the past few years, while the northern group shows a declining stability rate. In 1928 over 80 per cent of the mills in the southern district and less than 50 per cent in the northern district had a stability rate of over 90 per cent. Further, only slightly over 2 per cent of the mills in the southern district had a stability rate of less than 80 per cent, while in the northern district 20 per cent of the mills studied had a rate of less than 80 per cent. However, in both districts there were some individual mills which maintained a good average of employment during the six years studied, such as Nos. 2, 5, 11, and 15 in the northern district and 2, 4, 10, 13, 16, and 20 in the southern district. The establishments are arranged in the table in descending order according to the favorableness of their showing in 1928. TABLE 1.-PER CENT OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT IN THE COTTON INDUSTRY Fertilizer Industry THE percentages of full-time employment (computed as described) are presented for each of the years 1923 to 1928 for 53 plants manufacturing commercial fertilizer. The establishments are arranged in the table in descending order according to the favorableness of their showing in 1928. The study discloses that the fertilizer industry has a very unstable condition of employment and that no appreciable betterment of condition is apparent. The average rate of stability for the industry as a whole in 1928 was only 51.1. The table also discloses that of the 53 plants covered only about 4 per cent had a rate as high as 90, while 88 per cent of the plants had a rate of less than 80 and running as low as 26.1. The regular force of the individual plants is greatly augmented by additional employees during the shipping season for only a few months during the year and these additional employees are dropped when it is over. The low rate of stability of employment is largely occasioned by this seasonal activity of this industry. TABLE 2.-PER CENT OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT IN THE FERTILIZER INDUSTRY TABLE 2.-PER CENT OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT IN THE FERTILIZER INDUSTRY A 85 to 89.9 per cent.. Labor-Absorbing Power of American Industry SURVEY of the extent to which dispossessed workers were being absorbed by industry was made in the summer of 1928 by the Institute of Economics of the Brookings Institution, Washington, as part of an inquiry pertaining to unemployment, requested by the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. The results of the survey were presented in a paper1 before the annual meeting of the American Statistical Association at Chicago in December, 1928, the proceedings of which have been published in a supplement to the March, 1929, Journal of the association. The information presented was secured by trained investigators, who interviewed 754 discharged workers in a variety of industries in three industrial centers. The names and addresses of the workers discharged within the 12 months preceding September, 1928, were secured from the pay rolls of the discharging companies. Only those employees who were discharged because their services were no longer needed were included in the survey, no account being taken of those dismissed for inefficiency or insubordination. The information obtained included the sex and age of the worker, the date of discharge from last steady job, whether permanent employment had been obtained, the date and place of new employment, nature of the industry, type of work being done, and whether the worker had had any jobs in the interval between discharge from the plant at which the investigator secured the original information and the finding of a new job. An attempt was also made to find out how the pay received by the worker on the new job compared with that received on the old one. Only 410 of the 754 workers interviewed had found permanent employment up to the time of the survey. Of these, 6 had been idle for a year or more; 228, or over 50 per cent, had been out of work for more than a quarter of the year; and only 47, or less than 12 per cent, had secured permanent work within a month of discharge. 1 Measuring the Labor Absorbing Power of American Industry, by Isador Lubin. Of the 344 persons still without permanent jobs-45.6 per cent of the workers studied-29, or 8.4 per cent, had been out of work for a year. Only 202, or 58.7 per cent, had been idle for less than one-half Thus, the larger proportion of the workers had found considerable difficulty in getting relocated, and those who did find work had been idle for some time. of the year. Temporary employment had been obtained by 234 workers, or approximately one-third of the total number surveyed. Of these, 132 (17.5 per cent of the total number surveyed) had steady jobs when interviewed, while 102 (13.5 per cent of the total) were still only temporarily employed. Of the 520 (69 per cent of the total) who did not secure temporary employment, 278 (36.9 per cent of the total) had steady jobs when interviewed, but 242 (32.1 per cent of the total) were without employment. The temporary work included road building, distributing circulars, selling newspapers, clerking in stores on Saturdays, and mowing of lawns. The following table shows the period of unemployment of the 754 discharged workers interviewed: PERIOD OF UNEMPLOYMENT OF 754 DISCHARGED WORKERS Less than 10 per cent of the workers who had secured permanent jobs had been reemployed by the same plants and for the same work from which they had been discharged. One hundred and thirty-four had found work in industries which produced products similar to those made at the plants which formerly employed them, while 273 were employed in industries entirely new to them, necessitating adjustment to an entirely new product. The jobs of 188 differed only slightly from those previously held, but 221 had jobs which were not related to their former ones. The report gives the following examples of the shifts made by the latter group: Trained cutters with years of experience in clothing factories had become gasoline station attendants, watchmen in warehouses, time keepers in steel plants, and clerks in meat markets. An assistant foreman in a wire mill was driving a truck; a rotary-press operator was pressing clothes in a tailor shop; a machinist formerly in an envelope factory was selling hosiery for a mail-order house, and a lathe operator was running a mixer in a cement brick plant. One |