LEGISLATION - UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BILLS

Authors

Abstract

The ever-present problem of unemployment is today particularly acute. The ultimate aim, of course, must be to put an end to unemployment. But achievement of this aim is not in sight, and in the meantime we are set the task of mitigating, so far as possible, the sufferings incident to unemployment. The laissez-faire attitude toward social problems is passing, and an increasing opinion accepts this task of mitigation as resting on society. In 1908 Sir William Beveridge was able to write: "There has been thus a steady, if gradual, growth of the sense of public responsibility for the case of the unemployed." In a thorough analysis of the causes of unemployment he demonstrated that it was a condition beyond the power of the individual worker to control. The important clash of opinion is not over responsibility, but over how this responsibility should be shouldered. In the United States we depend almost wholly on public and private charity to relieve suffering from unemployment. During the present critical period heavy reliance is being placed on voluntary contributions to municipally administered funds. The only important federal action to relieve the suffering of the unemployed (as distinct from action to reduce the amount of unemployment) has been the creation of the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief to encourage such contributions. Charity is a method justified only by lack of a better one, and many believe that a better method exists in the form of compulsory unemployment insurance. The spread of this belief is shown by the fact that thirty-three bills providing for such insurance were introduced in the 1931 legislatures of seventeen of our states.

Recommended Citation

LEGISLATION - UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BILLS, 30 Mich. L. Rev. 410 (1932).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol30/iss3/7