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JUL 10 19IJ 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT OFFICES* 
 
 Charles B. Barnes, Director, Bureau of Employment, State of 
 New York, Albany 
 
 The subject of unemployment has been much under discus- 
 sion in the past few years, and the conditions in the large cities, 
 especially during the winter time, have been serious. This coun- 
 try has now reached a point where there is a chronic condi- 
 tion of unemployment, brought about through many causes, 
 which we do not have time in this paper to discuss. During the 
 past winter unemployment has been in a very acute stage, due 
 to financial depression, the European war,^c. 
 
 All sorts of agencies, such as mayor's committees and other 
 hastily appointed bodies, have attempted to solve, or etse offer 
 a solution for, this condition. Naturally, public employment 
 offices suggest themselves as a remedy. The agitation for such 
 otfices at the present time has its good and its bad sides. The 
 subject of public employment offices should be brought to the 
 attention of the public but too many people who are urging 
 their establishment regard them in some vague way as a remedy 
 for an acute trouble, without realizing that public employment 
 bureaus are not temporary expedients for an acute situation, but 
 a permanent institution which, in time, will be able to help 
 relieve the chronic- condition. The benefit of these offices will 
 only come through the realization by employers and employes 
 that they are a necessary and integral part of our industrial life. 
 It would seem that this realization has to be a matter of growth, 
 :md it will necessarily be slow. 
 
 If public employment offices Imd been generally established 
 in all the states, or had been established as a federal institu- 
 tion, 25 years ago, and had been carried forw^ard with a true 
 understanding of their work, they would today be in a posi- 
 tion to point out some remedies, both for the chronic and acute 
 condition. 
 
 A few of the states have had public employment otTices for 
 several years, and at the present time there are 23 states having 
 public employment bureau laws, w^hile in seven other states 
 there are cities which have established municipal ofiices. There 
 has, however, been no cooperation between these different 
 bureaus. In some of the staies having several branches there 
 has been no cooperation between the difl'erent offices in the 
 state. All these offices have been handicapped by the lack of 
 
 *No. 54, Reprints of Reports and Addresses of the National Conference 
 of Charities and Correction, 1915 Meetiner at Baltimore. Order by number. 
 Write for descriptive list of publications, 315 Plymoutt^ Court, Chicago, 111. 
 
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appropriations, lack of realization of the true function of a 
 public employment office, and further, because they have to 
 a large extent been regarded as a political asset. In only four 
 states are they under civil service, and it is in these states that 
 the best work is being done. 
 
 The public generally has rather a low regard for employ-| 
 ment offices of all kinds, and too often public employment offices 
 are regarded merely as places for handling common labor or 
 else to cater to the unemployable or near-unemployable. In 
 consequence of this wrong impression as to their true use and 
 value appropriations are very low. The same attitude toward 
 them has led to the belief that anybody, regardless of character 
 or ability, can run an employment office. For this reason, the 
 superintendents, who secured their positions 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 public employment offices, which 
 are such a vital and necessary part of our industrial system, to 
 languish and receive little or no attention. 
 
 There has been a revival of interest in the subject now that 
 the matter is being considered from a federal standpoint. Two 
 bills have been introduced in Congress for the establishment of 
 a federal employment bureau. In addition, the United States 
 Industrial Relations Commission has issued a tentative plan for 
 a federal bureau, and in connection with this plan a study was 
 made of the different state employment offices now existing. 
 This has 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 cooperate 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. 
 
 An attempt has been made to utilize the post offices through- 
 out 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 accom- 
 plished through the post office as an employment agency. 
 
 Before public employment offices can accomplish the best 
 f^'^'^;^k, the public generally will have to be educated to their 
 fti !e and value. The experience of Germany and England 
 has Siiiwn how real is the need for a cooperative system of pub- • 
 lie employment offices covering the entire nation. 
 
 Soon this country will have to- face the discussion of the 
 /^ (establishment of unemployment insurance as has been so clearly 
 
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shown by Professor Seager. ! Such insurance does not now seem 
 farther off than did workmen's compensation ten years ago. 
 No system of unemployment insurance is possible without a fully 
 established system of public employment offices.^ 
 
 We have at present no organization of the labor market, 
 and very little is known about it. In times of industrial de- 
 pression all sorts of wild guesses are made as to the number 
 of unemployed in the large cities, and there is generally a de- 
 mand for a census of the unemployed. This it has always been 
 found impossible to take accurately, and in the end each com- 
 munity falls back upon an estimate and hesitates about what 
 shall b^ 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, through an extensive and 
 accurate system of registration, of knowing the approximate num- 
 ber out of work, according to their industry and trade. 
 
 One of the means suggested by those interested in public 
 affairs to relieve unemployment is the regularization of industry. 
 In too many industries there are a few^ feverish months of rush, 
 followed by a corresponding period of slackness or entire cessa- 
 tion. Through the study of industry w^hich the public employ- 
 ment offices will have to make while carrying on their daily 
 work information will be gathered of great value to those who 
 seek to regularize industry and to minimize the amount of sea- 
 sonal and cyclical work. 
 
 When one comes to know the importance of the work of 
 public employment offices there follow^s a realization of how 
 much is required of the workers in these offices, and of the 
 ability and training necessary. The man who acts as superin- 
 tendent of any public. employment office should have demanded 
 of him just as high qualifications as to character, ability and in- 
 telligence as are required of those who teach in our high schools 
 and colleges, and his assistants should measure up to the same 
 standard. 
 
 In this connection we wish to call attention to the fact that 
 the word free should be eliminated from all reference to public 
 employment offices. It is true their services are free, and so 
 also are the services of the public school. We have, however, 
 long since outgrown the use of the term, free, in conr ^o^iV^ 
 with the public schools. Why should we still retain i 
 ferring to the public employment offices, and thus in an .direct 
 way give them the odium of charity? The popular misconcep- 
 tion of public employment offices is nowhere better shown than 
 here. No parent at this day thinks of charity when he sends 
 
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his child to the public school, but he would not patronize a free 
 public employment bureau, except as a last resort. 
 
 Too much must not be expected from newly established em- 
 ployment oliices. They are as yet in the "little red school 
 house" period of their existence. It must be remembered, too, 
 that the work in an employment oliice is .of a hightiy technical 
 character, and that there are at present very few trained work- 
 ers in this field. One of the benefits of the present olfices will 
 be the training of a set of workers who eventually will be 
 capable of dealing adequately with the question of unemploy- 
 ment — workers who come in contact with the needs of industry 
 on the one hand, and the needs of applicants for positions on 
 the other. It is not every man, even though he may be well 
 trained in other lines, who can get from an employer the full 
 description of the kind of worker wanted, and who can take 
 that order in hand and select from the individuals in the line 
 in front of him the one who is best fitted to fill all the de- 
 mands of that position. It takes, too, a very tactful person to 
 question the sometimes reluctant applicant for work and get 
 from him all the information about himself necessary to know 
 before be can be fitted into the position. Then, further, the 
 present public employment offices have quite a task before them 
 in establishing themselves in the confidence of large employers 
 of labor, and especially employers of skilled workers. So gen- 
 eral is the belief that public employment offices only handle the 
 poorer grades of labor, that most employers refuse to seek their 
 aid. This feeling, of course, brings about a disinclination on 
 the part of efficient workers to patronize these offices. 
 
 The public bureaus of employment should cater to the needs 
 of every industry and every class of workers, from the pro- 
 fessional man to the man who uses a pick and shovel. There 
 is probably only one class of workers which the public em- 
 ployment bureaus are not at present fitted to cope with, and 
 that is the class of unemployable or near unemployable. In every 
 large community there is a class of men — and I take it the 
 delegates to this conference know them only too well — who 
 cannot be induced to hold a job at any one time for more v<;an 
 a few days. After a period, anywhere from three days to^nj-ee 
 weeks, something causes the man of this class to quit — > i.ier 
 drink, dissatisfaction, or inability to do his work. T'lis is the 
 class that charitable organizations are endeavoring constantly 
 to ''reclaim." The different agencies go the weary round of 
 attempting to keep them at work. It is a never-ending labor of 
 finding them new jobs. It is the state's duty tenderly, yet firmly, 
 ik) take charge of these people and, through farm colonies, or 
 
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by other agencies through which the state's authority can be 
 wielded, gradually to reclaim and cure them, by a long course 
 of scientific and intelligent treatment. At present this work is 
 left to private charity, which is without authority, and it at- 
 tempts to do the work of reclaiming the men of this class through 
 the regular channels of industry. It cannot be done. But as 
 the state will not do it, the reclaiming of these people will have 
 to be left to the only agency which now attempts to deal with 
 it — private charity. It is not the function of the public employ- 
 ment bureau to handle these men, and if it attempted to cope 
 with them, it would be dragged down. The public employment 
 bureau has to overcome too many misconceptions and adverse 
 opinions to take this work on its shoulders at the present time. 
 What this class of people can do for the public employment 
 offices is only too well shown in many of the branch offices in 
 western states. These have become veritable hang-outs for the 
 near-unemployable. Decent workmen will not come to the 
 bureaus, because they do not wish to be classed with the peo- 
 ple seen and handled there. Employers, on the other hand, may 
 give the public office an order, but it has to be filled from such 
 inferior workmen that they never repeat the order; and, finally, 
 the office degenerates into handling men who beat carpets, do 
 odd jobs, or who are willing to work for starvation wages. It 
 can be conceived that at some time when public employment 
 offices have come into their true estate, then they mav have 
 a separate department for handling this class, doing what they 
 can to keep them at work, or otherwise intelligently disposing of 
 them. 
 
 But even at the present time public employment offices can 
 do better for private charity than attempt to handle the un- 
 employable. They can commence right now to check the ever 
 increasing flood of this class in two or three very definite ways. 
 
 In the first place, they can give practical suggestion and f^ 
 direction to young people who are ready to enter industry. 
 Many thousands of dollars are spent in educating the children 
 of the different communities. After receiving this education, 
 th are turned out of the schools at any time from the four- 
 ti h to the twentieth year, and allowed to hunt their vocation 
 in' life with very little well defined or intelligent direction. The 
 child mily 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 oppor- 
 
tunities in staple trades and new lines of business, to know 
 which were decaying trades, which were "blind-alley" trades, 
 and what vocation was best fitted to its education and tempera- 
 ment. To thus save the child from misdirection would cut off 
 one source of supply to the great stream of casual workers and 
 unemployables. 
 
 Public employment offices should also be able, in connec- 
 tion with trade unions, to give accurate information to voca- 
 tional 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 and unemployables would 
 be to help 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 casual workers, as well as the unemployable, are also re- 
 cruited from the ranks of those who have vainly striven to find 
 work in their own particular trade. Barring the drug habit, 
 there is probably no other thing so depressing to a man as the 
 weary hunt for a job, the 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, 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 that he has to go through 
 many avenues 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 busi- 
 ness 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 em- 
 ployment 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 
 
iissociation. If he has a lillle money, he can 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 employe and employer, but 
 to society as a whole. The method is as primitive as the ox- 
 team, and the inefficiency and waste are very great. 
 
 To sum up, then, while public employment offices do not and 
 cannot create jobs, they will minimize the number fruitlessly 
 searching for work, and more quickly bring employer and em- 
 ploye together. They will take the place of the private em- 
 ployment agencies, which so often exploit the workers. They 
 will give intelligent direction to young people who are just 
 starting into their life work. They will point out w^ays for the 
 regularization of industry and help to shift seasonal workers 
 from one trade to another. In the daily carrying on of all this 
 kind of work, the office will be compelled to collect, through its 
 records and otherwise, a vast amount of information which will 
 be available at all times for public use, information which, at 
 the present time, is brought out only through the work of 
 temporary commissions which attempt hastily to bring together 
 facts which should be collected solely by trained workers who 
 are daily dealing with all phases of industry. 
 
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 prices. 
 
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 $3.00. Members receive all publications free. 
 
 For information or pamphlet prices write: 
 
 NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CILVRITIES AND CORRECTION, 
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