responsibility could begin. And in proportion as industry becomes socialized the importance of remedial legislation and effort will be lessened and the importance of preventive legislation and effort increased.

But while a clear-visioned socialist administration, working within the capitalist system, could do much to reduce unemployment and to mitigate its worst evils, unemployment itself will never be wholly abolished until we have attained the socialist state.

STATUTORY PROVISIONS FOR AND ACHIEVEMENTS

OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT BUREAUS

BY HENRY G. HODGES,

Harrison Fellow in Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.

Recognizing one of the purposes of government to be the supplying of such information to its citizens as will promote their welfare, Governor Glynn of New York, in his message of March 6, 1914, emphasizes the state's duty to provide a system of labor exchanges. He concludes that "there is no information more vital to the citizen of the state than knowledge of where he may obtain work to feed and clothe himself and his dependents." In its first annual report the United States Industrial Commission points to unemployment as one of the principal causes of industrial unrest. The same report reiterates advice received from various states to the effect that the condition of unemployment is nationwide. The striking fact is that the issue is more acute on the Pacific coast than in the older sections of the East. This distress is caused largely by an antiquated system of labor marketing. The present system, in most cases, is adaptable to conditions that existed when the United States was east of the Alleghenies. There have recently developed hopeful signs of the abandonment of the old labor peddling system.

The two objects the legislators have in mind in establishing state free employment bureaus are: first, to regulate private agencies through competition; secondly, to fulfill the state's duty in bringing together the man and the job.2 The purpose of the state agency is to care for the reserve labor; to keep that reserve as low as possible by a coöperating system of labor exchanges. The efficient reserve for the United States is not gauged by the sum of the reserves necessary for its many thousands of factories. A more intensive shifting of the shiftable labor must be accomplished.

1 First Annual Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations. Washington, D. C., 1914, p. 21.

? For an extended account of the objects of the state employment bureaus, see United States Labor Bulletin No. 109, p. 35.

Nineteen states have passed laws providing for more or less effective systems of free employment offices. A bill with a similar purpose has been reported favorably (March 30th) to the legislature of California, by the committee to which it was referred. A bill was presented to the Pennsylvania legislature, providing for a system of public employment offices in the state, on April 7, 1915. Three of the nineteen established bureaus, viz., Nebraska, Maryland and South Dakota, are inactive; two more, Kansas and West Virginia, are operating in a very limited manner.

Municipal bureaus are operated independently in seven states, as follows:

Late in 1914 the Bureau of Immigration of the United States Department of Labor began the establishment of thirty-eight branch offices throughout the country, as indicated by Table I. These offices were established primarily for the distribution of farm labor.

"The entire country has been divided into eighteen distribution zones, and the distribution of labor in each zone will be in charge of an officer of the immigration service at the headquarters of each zone. It is hoped to have this plan in operation throughout the country within the next few months." *

Extract from a letter from the United States Department of Labor, dated December 3, 1914.

*Table supplied by Department of Labor.

The foregoing zones for the purpose of facilitating the distribution of farm labor in the United States are hereby established.

Of the nineteen states which have passed laws providing for free employment agencies several have passed more than one law on the subject. In such cases the provisions of the most recent act are given.

The bureau first created under state law is that of Ohio, established 1890. Laws creating state bureaus began in earnest with the twentieth century, although two more, Missouri and Illinois, were established in 1899. Most of these older laws have since been materially modified or replaced entirely. Between 1900 and 1905 Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, West Virginia, Kansas and Wisconsin passed laws providing for free labor exchanges. Massachusetts followed in 1906; Colorado and Nebraska in 1907; Oklahoma and Rhode Island in 1908; Indiana in 1909; and by 1914 Kentucky, South Dakota and New York had provided for "state employment bureaus."

General Supervision and Local Offices

There are two favorite ways of providing for the location of local employment offices. The first is to name a minimum population standard; the second is to leave the selection to the discretion of those in charge of the bureau. The first method is followed by Colorado, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri; the second by Wisconsin, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York. In Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota and Maryland the legislators themselves selected the locations for the local offices, and provided accordingly in the laws. Ohio is divided into five districts, with a local office in each district. Oklahoma has a central office at the capitol, and two branch offices. Kansas provides for local offices in cities of the "first and second class." Nebraska, Maryland and ' Kentucky provide for a central office only, the business to be transacted by mail. Where population is made the basis for the location of local offices, the minimum requirement ranges from 25,000 in Colorado to 75,000 in Missouri. Colorado allows two offices in a city of 200,000, while Illinois provides for three in a city of 1,000,000 population. The California bill provides for offices "in the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, and thereafter, whenever he [commissioner of labor statistics] deems it necessary, in other cities and towns.

In a great number of cases the general supervision of the employment bureau is given to the commissioner, deputy commissioner, or chief, as the case might be, of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such is the case in Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Senate Bill No. 325, Section 2. Introduced January 18, 1915.