filled. Since 1908 it has not reached 6 cents, touching the low limit of 4.18 cents in 1909. During that year 38,846 workers were placed. The national bureau has not collected any figures from which to judge of its effectiveness. The chief of the division in this department writes, March 13, 1915: "Since the work is in the formative stage and much of the work experimental as to detail, statistics bearing on the same would fall short of being illuminating or of practical value just now."

There is a general expression from all sections of the country that the recent business depression has had a decided effect on the results of state employment bureaus during 1914. In many cases the previous steady growth in business has been decidedly retarded. The history of the public employment bureau in this country has not been a particularly bright one. Nor has it been a long one. We have hardly had sufficient experience in this new line to develop a marked efficiency. We are just beginning to have men who are trained in the work. Then, too, the immediate cause of the bureaus in many states, political rewards did not prophesy a particularly efficient future. The financial backing has been, in almost all cases, insufficient for a useful and growing bureau.

A national system of centralized and coöperating exchanges, towards which we are rapidly working, will form a very efficient machine for keeping our reserve labor supply at its minimum. But the bureaus are merely distributive agents. They gather the information and point out the opportunities. They do not create jobs. They are the first step in the solution of the problem of unemployment, a problem which is rapidly becoming a national question. The facilities afforded by a comprehensive system of exchanges, and the data which they would collect in a few years, would form the basis for the information and regulations looking toward regularization of industries, shifting of help among the seasonable occupations, and the correct treatment of the unemployables the real solution of the problem.

PUBLIC BUREAUS OF EMPLOYMENT

BY CHARLES B. BARNES,

Director, New York State Bureau of Employment.

The subject of public employment offices just at this time is attracting a great deal of attention. This is in the main due to the large amount of unemployment throughout the United States. Unemployment in this country has gradually reached a chronic condition, through many causes which are not pertinent to discuss here. But just now we are in an acute stage, due to financial depression, the European war, etc.

All sorts of agencies are attempting to solve, or else offering a solution for, this condition. Naturally, public employment offices suggest themselves as a remedy. The present agitation has its good and bad sides. It is well to bring the subject of public employment offices to the fore, but too many people regard them in some vague way as a remedy for an acute situation, without realizing that public employment bureaus are an institution which can only be beneficial through the realization by employers and employees that they are a necessary and integral part of our industrial life. This realization has got to be a matter of growth, and will necessarily be slow. If public employment offices had been generally established in all the states twenty-five years ago, and had been carried forward with a true understanding of their work, they would today have been in a position to point out some remedies for the present situation.

A few of the states have had public employment offices for several years, and at the present time there are nineteen states which have public employment office laws, while in seven other states there are cities which have established municipal bureaus. There has, however, been no coöperation between these different bureaus, and in some of the states having several offices there has been no coöperation between the several branches in the state. In all these states the offices have been handicapped by the lack of appropriations, lack of realization of their true function, and because they have to a large extent been regarded as a political

asset. Only in four states are they under civil service, and in these the best work is being done.

The public generally has rather a low regard for employment offices of all kinds, and too often public employment offices have been regarded merely as places to handle common labor, or else to cater to the unemployable or near-unemployable. With this wrong impression as to their true use and value, appropriations were consequently very low. The same attitude toward them led to the belief that anybody, regardless of character or ability, could run an employment office. For this reason, superintendents who secured their offices in payment for political services, were too often men of limited capacity and with no very high conception of the work to which they were appointed. All this has caused this vital and necessary part of our industrial system to languish and receive little or no attention.

One of the things which indicates a revival of interest in the subject is that the matter is now being considered from a federal standpoint. Already two bills have been introduced in Congress for the establishment of a federal employment bureau. In addition, the United States Industrial Relations Commission issued, about a year ago, a tentative plan for a federal bureau, and in connection with this tentative plan a study was made of the different state employment offices now existing. This led the commission in their first report to emphasize the need of a national bureau of employment in connection with the labor department, which would coöperate with state and municipal employment offices, which would regulate private employment agencies and which would establish clearing houses for industrial information, thus uniting all public employment offices into one national system. The report refers to the imperative necessity of organizing a market for labor on a modern business basis, "So that there will be no vacant jobs and idle workers in the same community at the same time." An attempt has been made to utilize the post offices throughout the country as public employment offices. Only those who know the highly technical character of the work carried on in an employment office will understand how little can be accomplished through the post office as an employment agency.

Before public employment offices can accomplish the best results in this country, the public generally will have to be educated

to their true use and value. The experience of Germany and England has shown how real is the need for a coöperative system of public employment offices covering the entire nation.

There is in this country no organization of the labor market, and very little is known about it. In times of industrial depression all sorts of wild guesses are made as to the number of unemployed in the large cities and there is generally a demand for a "census of the unemployed." This it has always been found impossible to take accurately, and in the end each city falls back upon an estimate and hesitates about what shall be done to relieve the unemployment, because of the lack of accurate information as to the extent and character of it. We are now conceiving the possibility of registering those out of work according to their industry and trade.

The number of casual workers and those who drift about in a constant state of under-employment is greatly increasing. There are many causes for this, and the public employment offices can assist in checking this increase in two or three very definite ways.

Many thousands of dollars are spent in educating the children of the different communities. After receiving this education they are turned out of the schools at any time from their fourteenth to their twentieth year and allowed to hunt their vocation in life without well defined or intelligent direction. The child may turn to its parent, who has very limited knowledge as to the industries of his community or the country at large. If the child turns to its teacher it finds but little more help here, and so in a haphazard fashion it secures a "job." There should be in every community a central point to which the child could turn to learn all about industries, all about opportunities in staple trades and new lines of business, to know which were decaying trades, which were "blindalley" trades and what vocation was best fitted to its education and temperament. To thus save the child from misdirection would cut off one source of supply to the great stream of casual workers. Public employment offices should also be able to give accurate information to vocational and trade schools as to what should be taught in them to meet the coming needs of the various industries. Another way in which the public employment offices could help to lessen the number of casuals would be in helping to shift workers in seasonal industries from one work to another.

Many trades and industries can be, or are, carried on for part of the year only, and when the workers leave one trade they have no central point where information can be had concerning some other trade in which they could be employed for the rest of the year. Lacking this, they drift about and soon become members of the great body of under-employed.

The under-employed and casual worker is also recruited from the ranks of those who have vainly striven to find work in their own particular trades. Barring the drug habit, there is probably no other thing so depressing to a man as the weary hunt for a jobthe being turned away day after day from factory gates and offices. After a few weeks of this sort of thing, men, who under ordinary circumstances would be good and steady workmen, gradually get into such a depressed state that at last when work is found they have become unfitted to do it. Our bread lines contain many men who have gone down under this sort of depressing search.

A man seeking work today finds many avenues through which to obtain it. The most common way is to apply at the actual place of the work. This means tramping the streets of the city or riding to many parts of the community where work is going on. Or the man may answer an ad in the newspaper and find himself in line with many hundreds of other applicants. Or he may insert an ad in some newspaper and go the weary round in answer to the replies. If he is a union man he can apply to the headquarters or to the business agent of his union. If he is a non-union man, or is not opposed to working in an open shop, he can apply to the employment bureau of an employers' association. If he has a family to support and has reached the point of asking charity, he may be referred to the employment office of some charitable association. If he has a little money he may go to a private employment agency. Here he may be charged a registration fee, and if, after some delay, he is finally placed in a position, he will be made to pay anywhere from five to twenty per cent of his first month's earnings. So many varied ways cause a scattering of energies and a loss of time and money, not only to the employee and employer, but to society as a whole. The method is as primitive as the oxteam, and the inefficiency and waste is very great.

To better this method the public employment offices were created. But it must be remembered they do not and cannot