William Bauchop Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

In response to your inquiry of the 10th instant, enclosing letters dated November 6 and 12, 1917, addressed to you by Honorable Royal Meeker, United States Commissioner of Labor Statistics, I wish to submit the following statement in regard to the investigations urged by Commissioner Meeker:

(1) Expansion of studies into retail prices and cost of living, including rapid budgetary surveys...... $150,000

I have approved the inserting of an appropriation of $300,000 in the General Deficiency Bill for the studies included under (1). If this appropriation is granted by Congress, the $50,000 from the National Security and Defense Fund, which you recently accorded the Bureau of Labor Statistics for an investigation of the cost of living in the families of shipbuilders will be returned to your emergency fund.

(2) Strikes and lockouts.............................. $25,000

The necessity for securing more complete information on strikes and lockouts is very important.

(3) Surveys of the labor conditions in the basal industries, to determine the existence or the extent of a labor shortage, industrial slackness due to shutting down plants for various reasons, unemployment, and the like in different geographical areas.......................... $100,000

The investigation just mentioned is already being covered by the United States Employment Service, which has recently received an appriation from the National Security Defense Fund.

(4) Intensive surveys of the essential industries, to determine the extent to which unskilled laborers, women, and children have been substituted for skilled workers and male laborers and to determine what occupations women may take up without detriment to their health and the welfare of the nation......................................... $100,000

I think it most necessary that the surveys indicated in (4) should be undertaken in order to furnish us the basis of facts to guide employers if it becomes necessary to dilute labor by the employment of women and young persons to perform work now done by men and the employment of unskilled laborers in the doing of skilled work.

(5) Studies of trade agreements for the purpose of bringing out the provisions establishing standards of time and piece wage rates and the methods provided for settling labor disputes.......................... $25,000

We are able to proceed only at a snail's pace in the studies outlined in item (5), as only one field agent of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is employed on this work. What he has found in the clothing trades has been of great value. We need similar studies in other industries and we need to speed up in these studies if they are to be of most value to the country.

(6) Intensive studies of industrial accidents to show the relation of the accident rates to occupations and the inexperience of new employees.............................................. $25,000

(7) Studies in industrial poisons....................... 25,000

It is more important that the investigations proposed under (6) and (7) should be undertaken now than ever before.

I regard the amounts estimated by Commissioner Meeker for the carrying on of these various studies as the minimum requirement.

The correspondence enclosed in your letter is returned herewith.

Very sincerely yours,

William B. Wilson
Secretary.


The President,
The White House,
Washington, D. C.


Enclosures.