Excerpt from Unemployment and American Trade Unions The New York Department of Labor has collected since March, 1897, statistics of unemployment among the trade unionists of that State. From 1897 to 1914 it collected semi annually, from all the trade unions, information as to the number of members employed and unemployed on the last working days of March and September, the causes of such unemployment, the number of members idle throughout the first and third quarters of the year, and the number of days which each member worked during these periods. The supply of this information was made compulsory by law. Since December, 1901, the New York Department has selected certain local unions in each trade and industry from which it has secured monthly returns as to unemployment. It has attempted to select local unions which have reliable and intelligent secretaries, to have each trade represented in proportion to the number of workmen engaged in each class, and to maintain the same proportionate representation from month to month so that the data may 'be comparable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.