126 UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES -
I was in a conference this last week where there were two very dis-
tinguished railroad presidents discussing this situation, and they
pointed out that the railroad business, which had been the most
stable business in America, was being reorganized all over again in
order to meet the intense competition of the passenger carrying auto-
mobile and the freight carrying truck, which has cut so deeply into
the passenger and freight traffic of the railroads that it has raised an
entirely new problem in railroading, and when that difficult situation
was presented by one of the railroad executives, the head of one of the
great oil companies of the United States said:
Have you considered the extent to which that is offset by the new volume ot
freight developed with the rise and expansion of the oil industry?
And one of the presidents paused and the gentleman said:
I can not speak for the entire oil industry, but I can tell you this, that my own
company is now paying per annum for the freight carriage of our products to all
parts of the United States, to the railroads of the country, more than was paid
by the entire oil industry of the United States 12 years ago.
That is the character of the problems that we are facing, and I
believe, Mr. Chairman, that it will recommend itself to this committee
that voluntary local action coordinated and cooperating under the
leadership of the Federal Government of the United States, as it has
been doing, can make a great contribution to the solution of this
problem, but the ultimate unit of responsibility is local, and the
ultimate unit for the responsibility of all our social problems should be
kept local. The more you ask citizens to look to Congress and to
Washington to settle their own local difficulties, the less responsible
you make them and the more difficult become the great social problems
that require individual initiative, individual intelligence, and indi-
vidual responsibility for their guidance.
So I hope I have made it clear that our objections to this legislation
to-day are not predicated upon any light and fantastic objection, but
go to the nature of the proposal which threatens the very integrity
of local self-government and creates what may be regarded as a
precedent for encroachment into the government of the State. You
are already overloading the Federal Government with administrative
responsibilities so great that it threatens to break down under the
obligations of administration already thrust upon it, and now you
offer this as an opening wedge, because action of this nature to-day
would merely be the opening of the door to the further expansion of
the same authority and the further enlargement of appropriations to
take over this placement. And remember, gentlemen, that when you
are operating your local agencies for placement purposes, when you
are undertaking to provide regulations under which they shall ad-
minister all these local questions relating to employment agencies,
you are actually establishing the policy of the State with respect to
private and public employment agencies—and when I speak of private
agencies I mean that vast body of agencies that are within every plant
in the United States, through its personnel, its management, under-
taking to meet its own problems of placement and adjustment of men
within its own industry.
I thank you, gentlemen.
Mr. MonTaGUE. Have you made any approximation of the number
ol origloyens this legislation would place upon the Government, pay
roll?
