190 UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 
loan companies who, by the number, type and tales of those they deal with, learn 
the drift in industrial pay rolls; charity and welfare officials, public and private, 
who, like them, feel the fluctuating pressures that grim necessity generates? 
And Army and Navy recruiting men who know how easy it is to persuade 
potential industrial labor to sign up for a year or more when jobs are scarce, and 
how hard when they’re numerous? Their statistics I’ve found a good barometer, 
provided one first takes the trouble to talk with those who compile them. A 
marked decrease in enlistments, for instance, in a given recruiting area may 
denote better times ahead for the area’s industry, or merely the inconsequential 
fact that the area’s quota of recruits has been filled. 
Secretaries of trade associations—metal, building, textiles, electrical, woodwork- 
ing, slate—too, are inexhaustible mines to the prospector for employment trends. 
More each year employment is becoming germane to their jobs and to the jobs of 
secretaries of councils, lodges and fraternal organizations. 
But surpassing all these as harbingers of the work trend stand those who, in 
factories, mines and stores, our railroads and publie utilities, employ the worker 
and record his release. Employment managers, directors of personnel, labor 
scouts—eall them what you will. 
Long before a labor trend toddles they know its ilk and in which direction it’s 
about to go. Years of job brokering have yet to show me statistics on employ- 
ment or unemployment pertaining to my own community that did more than 
confirm a condition that employment men I had talked with knew about long 
before it was reduced to figures. 
The employment undertow that in the late winter of the past year was first- 
page news to millions was old stuff to thousands of employment men and women 
from coast to coast weeks before the winter's first snow fell. Why? Because 
theirs was the job of recording the departures of those whom the undertow 
caught. 
And by the same token to-day, theirs is the job of recording the slow gradual 
upward surge in employment that, months from now, statistics may proclaim. 
Ir UncLE Sam TurNED JoB-HUNTER 
By Kenneth Coolbaugh, Sunerintendent State Employment Office. Philadelphia 
Since the fall of 1927 unemployment and a shortage of skilled man power in the 
metal trade have been curtailing our buying power and our production. 
A large percentage of the idle would be working if they knew of jobs now avail- 
able elsewhere and could get to them. Much of the shortage would be absorbed 
if business needing labor knew where to look for it. 
“Very well, bring buyer and seller together through a system of employment 
exchanges. That’ssimple,” says the layman. 
Because that is being done with tolerable success on a small scale, thousands 
believe it can be done just as successfully on a national scale, through a clearing 
house at Washington. 
This program interests business for two reasons. It entails increased expendi- 
tures of public funds and erects machinery that might be used for purposes even 
more costly to the taxpayer. Once a government underwrites the policy of register- 
ing with actuarial exactitude its unemployed, those so registered will in the end 
look to that government either to show them jobs or an alternative—unemplov- 
ment doles. 
What then of the need for an increase in the number of public employment 
offices and for a central exchange at Washington? With what success do public 
employment offices now existing find jobs for men and men for jobs? What are 
their inherent limitations. that, shifted to a larger stage. would be even more patent 
and conclusive? 
BUREAU CAN'T DO IT ALL 
There are to-day 209 public employment offices in this country. The majority 
post-date the war. Each year sees more of them, all underwritten by public 
funds—Federal, State or municipal. Each year, too, sees more men and women 
placed by them into gainful employment and a broader patronage of them bv 
commerce and industry. 
Very well, why not double, triple their number? 
Because we can not appreciably change the employment conditions of any 
ad or that of the nation merely by increasing the number of employment 
oinces.