“It seems hopeless, and also unfair, to expect out-of-work insurance, employment bureaus, or philanthropy, to counteract the controlling force of profit-seeking.  There is every reason to believe that profit-seeking has been a tremendous stimulus to economic activity in the past.  It is doubtful if the present great accumulation of capital would have come into existence without it.  But to-day it seems as it were to be caught up by its own social consequences.  It is hard to escape from the insistence of a situation in which the money a workman makes in a year fails to cover the upkeep of his family; and this impairment of the father’s income through unemployment has largely to be met by child-and woman-labor.  The Federal Immigration Commission’s report shows that in not a single great American industry can the average yearly income of the father keep his family.  Seven hundred and fifty dollars is the bare minimum for the maintenance of the average-sized American industrial family.  The average yearly earnings of the heads of families working in the United States in the iron and steel industry is $409; in bituminous coal-mining $451; in the woolen industry $400; in silk $448; in cotton $470; in clothing $530; in boots and shoes $573; in leather $511; in sugar-refining $549; in the meat industry $578; in furniture $598, etc.

“He who decries created work, municipal lodging-houses, bread-lines, or even sentimental charity, in the face of the winter’s destitution, has an unsocial soul.  The most despicable thing to-day is the whine of our cities lest their inadequate catering to their own homeless draw a few vagrants from afar.  But when the agony of our winter makeshifting is by, will a sufficient minority of our citizens rise and demand that the best technical, economic, and sociological brains in our wealthy nation devote themselves with all courage and honesty to the problem of unemployment?”

Carl was no diplomat, in any sense of the word—­above all, no political diplomat.  It is a wonder that the Immigration and Housing Commission stood behind him as long as it did.  He grew rabid at every political appointment which, in his eyes, hampered his work.  It was evident, so they felt, that he was not tactful in his relations with various members of the Commission.  It all galled him terribly, and after much consultation at home, he handed in his resignation.  During the first term of his secretaryship, from October to December, he carried his full-time University work.  From January to May he had a seminar only, as I remember.  From August on he gave no University work at all; so, after asking to have his resignation from the Commission take effect at once, he had at once to find something to do to support his family.