Aberdeen Herald

CONNECTING THE MAN AND THE JOB
New National Movement to Aid the Unemployed.

THROUGH LABOR EXCHANGES
These Would Eliminate Difficulties of Both Work Seekers and Employers.

Problem of the Idle Calls For Solution Regardless of Whether the Times Are Good or Bad.

A constructive program to combat unemployment-such is the slogan of the first national conference on unemployment. This is the first concerted effort which the United States has made to combat the national problem of what to do for the man without a job.

The Association on Unemployment, which is working in affiliation with the American Association For Labor Legislation, proposes to make this work permanent rather than periodic, and to do this it proposes a definite program which includes two main features-the "regularizing" of the so called seasonal industries and the establishing and knitting together of public employment bureaus into a national system of labor exchanges.

England-in fact, all Europe-has been forced to face this problem of the unemployed, and it is doing so through the labor exchange.

The New York Times publishes an interview on this subject with John B. Andrews, secretary of the Association on Unemployment. Mr. Andrews has been investigating the question of unemployment in the United States and abroad since 1910.

Wage Loss of $1,000,000,000.

"United States census figures for 1900," says Mr. Andrews, "show that in that year over 6,000,000 working people-that is, nearly a fourth of all those engaged in gainful occupations in this country-were at some time of the year out of work. Of these some 3,000,000 lost from one to three months each. On the basis of $10 a week this represents a loss in wages of approximately $200,000,000. The figures from the 1910 census are not available yet.

"Two million of these 6,000,000 were employed in trades where four to six months' work was lost, representing a total wage loss of approximately $500,000,000, while some 700,000 were idle for from seven to twelve months in the year-a wage loss approximately again of $300,000,000.

"This brings the wage loss occasioned by lack of employment to a total of $1,000,000,000 for a single year.

"Even in prosperous times we have mills closing down and advertising that workers were not to be had. At the very same time in other parts of this country men are tramping from shop to shop looking for work. There has been no place to which they might apply for trustworthy information concerning positions open in any other part of the country. Even if there had been they would in most cases not have had the money to get to the jobs that wanted them-the jobs they sought in vain.

Exchanges In Nineteen States.

The first step in the organization of the labor market is not only the systematic supervision of the local, commercial, private employment bureaus. There must be something which reaches further than that-something which enables employer and employee to get reliable information, not only from different parts of the city or the state but different parts of the whole country. This institution is the system of public labor exchanges, which not only collects information from the regulated private agencies, but establishes a chain of free employment bureaus.

"The public labor exchange under state control has already been provided in nineteen states and twelve municipalities of the United States.

"Of course," concluded Mr. Andrews, "the employment bureau is to be for both men and women and absolutely no fees are to be charged. The Department of Agriculture furnishes information without cost. That is the function of the labor exchange-the furnishing of information."