UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 191 
arn 
ate, 
tes? 
ade 
and 
‘ter, 
A 
nay 
Hal 
rk- 
ids. 
1 of 
in 
Ker 
‘hor 
it’s 
oy- 
Lan 
amg 
rst- 
nen 
ase 
WOW 
1a] 
the 
ail- 
| 
ant 
1ds 
"ing 
vdi- 
ven 
ter- 
end 
Av- 
ent 
nlic 
are 
ont 
Only a change in the number of character of industiies from which jobs spring 
can materially change an employment situation. Again, no matter how able its 
staff, a public employment office can do only a thin percentage of its community 
job placement work.” The reasons are fundamental. 
JOBS AND THE JOBLESS 
Help-wanted columns, for instance, will long continue as the most convenient 
meeting place for jobs and the jobless. The number of private or so-called 
fee-charging offices, too, is constantly increasing. They would not multiply 
unless an increasing patronage warranted. 
Of similar hue are the commissary companies that combine the business of 
recruiting labor with that of feeding and housing it on hydroelectric, highway 
and myriad construction operations. Each year brings more of them to a 
service that public agencies can not approximate unless commonwealths be 
authorized by law to engage in similar activities—with public funds. 
How then can a governmental national clearing house reflect more than a 
narrow sector of the entire country’s employment picture? 
Furthermore, it is a near-truism in employment circles that applications 
for employment are worth little more than the paper they are written on. Glitter- 
ing exceptions to the contrary, the great majority of employable men who file 
written applications for work to-day will, & week or two hence. have found 
their niche. 
Within the past month my office associates have sent letters to 8 lead burners, 
21 electricians, 43 electric and acetylene welders, 15 stenographers, 9 draftsmen, 
12 plumbers and steamfitters, 18 chauffeurs, and 62 others of miscellaneous 
vocations, asking them to call regarding specific jobs that have materialized 
since they filed their applications with us. Total 188. 
How many responded in person or by letter? Thirty-three. Less than 20 
ber cent—an average net that is seldom topped by fee-charging agencies or by 
employment departments of industrial firms. = Qf these 33 only seven were finally 
placed in the jobs we outlined to them. 
What becomes of the 8) per cent? After filing applications, they find positions; 
move to other stamping grounds; illness overtakes them; traveling costs or a 
wife deter them; or from time to time, the job-bearing letters come back to their 
senders marked, “ Not known at,” or ** No such address.” 
Conceive then a national clearing house striving to transfer 10 or 100 unem- 
Ployed down-east mechanics to the automobile belt or an equal number of west- 
Coast shipbuilders to the Great Lakes. The time factor of itself is a sufficient 
barrier to a fit performance of the task. The average office or unskilled manual 
bpening to-day in our thickly settled communities is short-lived. In the cities 24 
Yours is a goodly span for its life. 
Before help-wanted pages or employment bureaus can direct the right type 
of applicants to a plant or office it’s an even break that the firm will fill the posi- 
tions from its quota of daily job seekers. With the general exception of building 
trades and textiles the skilled to-day are the hunted; the tradeless, ever the great 
Majority of the unemploved, are the job hunters. The former, because of mergers 
and relocating of industries, are at times temporarily marooned but they soon find 
their groove with little recourse to outside aid. But the tradeless, needing direc- 
tion more, are less able to profit bv it because their number usually far exceeds the 
obs available. 
But more formidable looms the perennial query that eamps in every labor mart; 
who will pay the transportation? 
For example, the early sumer of 1929 saw a surplus of unskilled labor in 
various sections of the eastern seaboard and a shortage in Detroit. A practical 
broblem such as would confront any national clearing house was how to put the 
dle to work and restore the buying power of thousands of families? 
LABOR ISN'T MOBILE® 
rity 
hlie 
nen 
hv 
any 
ant 
My own office, one of many public employment bureaus, could have sent 
hundreds. Yet it sent none. The railroad fare deterred the idle from digging 
down in their own pockets without assurance that definite jobs would be theirs 
In Detroit; and quite properly, no funds from any public source were available 
lo finance the expedition. We could only tell applicants that the jobs existed. 
The rest was up to principals. 
118808—30—sER 11—12