of Information, when it became necessary in 1914 to meet an industrial emergency requiring a national service, the Secretary of Labor adopted the Division of Information as the departmental agency for that purpose. His statutory authority for doing so appears in part in the section of the immigration law of 1907 creating the Division of Information, and in part in the organic law of the Department. Continued thus through the Secretary's action under the urge of industrial need, the United States Employment Service had grown from its one agency in New York in 1914 to an extensive national organization with scores of public employment stations, when the United States entered the World War. At that time, however, it had become evident that the connection of this service with the Bureau of Immigration was a handicap for general employment purposes and might be a serious one under war conditions. As a war measure, therefore, it was divorced from the Immigration Service in the autumn of 1917 and made a service in the Office of the Secretary. Its activities in war time were too many and too much complicated with peace-time functions to permit of restatement and reinterpretation in this summary. For full and trustworthy information and a clear understanding, reference must be had to the Department's annual reports. 43

Conciliation.

With the beginning of the war the number of labor disputes calling for departmental mediation increased suddenly and enormously, and a majority of the employers and employees involved showed a keen desire to secure the good offices of Department of Labor conciliators. In many instances the conciliators were able to bring about agreements and to avert threatened strikes. Governmental necessity for full production stimulated the commissioners of conciliation to make every effort to secure satisfactory adjustments, with the special purpose of preventing stoppages of work and consequent loss to the country in output. Vastly increased production was thus facilitated. Though employers often refused to deal with committees representing their own employees, none refused to discuss the merits of their labor disputes with the conciliators of this Department.

The opportunities thus afforded each side to learn the real position of the other soon bore fruit. Strikes that would have involved thousands of workers were quietly averted and industrial peace maintained. All this was accomplished without publicity and the consequent excitement which invariably attends industrial disturbances

43 Department Reports of 1917, pp. 67-94 and 339-359; 1918, pp. 173-174, 201-219, 459-486, and 673-729; 1919, pp. 276-302 and 885-1056.

when heralded in the press. Requests for conciliators came to the Department from governmental agencies as well as from unofficial employers and employees. These applications increased fourfold in an amazingly brief period following the declaration of war. They came from the Department of War, the Department of the Navy, the Council of National Defense, the Shipping Board, the War Industries Board, and other agencies which had been created for the conduct of the war. It was the policy of the Department of Labor not to endeavor to impose its viewpoint upon either the worker or the management, but rather to find some basis mutually acceptable even though not mutually satisfactory. The work of mediation is not judicial in character; it is not to listen to both sides and then determine the rights and wrongs of the matter, nor to pass judgment and then enforce its decision. Its work is diplomatic rather than judicial. It is in this spirit that problems of conciliation in labor controversies have always been approached by the Departmentnot only in peace time but also in war time. In line with that purpose the conciliators were often able to remove barriers which kept employers and employees from meeting on common ground. This paved the way for more friendly relations and a broader grasp of conflicting interests. The fact was brought home to each side that there may be another side to any dispute. Seed was thus sown which bore fruit in modifications of working conditions, greater consideration on one side for the rights of employees, and, on the other, better understandings of problems of employers. Labor discovered that it had a standing in the Government machinery of its country whenever its demands were based on its industrial and constitutional rights, while employers found in the Department a barrier to unreasonable exactions.14

Departmental Cabinet.

With the increased number of subdivisions of the Department of Labor which war emergencies necessitated, and the interlacing of their functions, the Secretary found it desirable to hold regular cabinet meetings composed of the heads of all the subdivisions. The members of this cabinet, which continued to function until after the close of the fiscal year 1919, were the Assistant Secretary, the Solicitor (both as such and as Acting Secretary), the Chief Clerk, the Chief of the Division of Conciliation, the Director of the Division of Negro Economics, and the heads of the statutory bureaus and of the war-emergency services.45

"Department Reports of 1917, pp. 11-66; 1918, pp. 30-95; 1919, pp. 27-120. 46 Department Reports of 1918, pp. 140-141; 1919, p. 204.

AMERICANIZATION.

As early as 1915 this Department, through its Bureau of Naturalization, engaged actively in the work of qualifying aliens for American citizenship as soon as they declare their intention of abjuring their native allegiance and assuming American allegiance in its stead.

For a governmental department to engage in such work with aliens who have not declared that intention might be regarded as unfriendly by their own Governments. It could be understood as implying that our Government does not welcome immigrants unless they intend to become citizens. But when a resident alien formally abjures his native allegiance and declares his intention of becoming an American as soon as our laws permit, the time is ripe for training him up to the citizenship he has voluntarily declared his intention of applying for. It is not enough for the Bureau of Naturalization merely to oppose applicants who are not qualified when they apply; it should encourage and assist them to devote the two years or more between their declarations of intention and their formal application for citizenship, to recognizing the rights that American citizenship confers and learning the duties it demands.

In that spirit the Bureau of Naturalization, under the direction of the Secretary of Labor, began its work of Americanization by bringing declarants for citizenship directly in contact with the public schools of the United States. Theretofore the only attention given by public-school authorities directly to candidates for citizenship had been to petitioners for naturalization. Until they petitioned for citizenship, declarants were neglected. The story of the development of this and further work is a long one. Beginning at a time when the declarant received no welcome, no official attention, the bureau had in its fifth year of this work brought into immediate cooperation with it over 3,000 public school administration units. Although the story is a long one, it is nevertheless intensely interesting, and the work of which it tells is likely to increase in civic usefulness as Americanization under the act of Congress of May 9, 1918, proceeds. Under that act a Director of Citizenship has been appointed in the Bureau of Naturalization. So far as voluntary organizations cooperate with this official directorate, they contribute to the realization of that ideal of Americanization which demands that all shall be governed, that they shall be governed by all, and that their governing shall be for all.48

46

46 Department Reports of 1916, pp. 459-506; 1917, pp. 507-551; 1918, pp. 198-199 and 604-610; 1919, pp. 272-275 and 783-862.

LABOR OUTINGS.

In developing methods for supplying help in harvest time the Department was confronted with a special problem. Not only is the demand for help in the grain belt intense during the harvest season but so far as it is supplied from outside the workers usually have no employment to which they may return when the harvest season ends. The problem thus presented might be solved, and other employment problems with it, by arrangements with industrial establishments for making their not unusual but irregular suspensions of work at such times and for such periods as would permit their employees to engage in suitable seasonal work. Not only would this assist in solving seasonal problems; it would tend to make steadier the work of the industrial establishments themselves. To make up for their shortages of output from these seasonal suspensions, the industrial establishments would increase their output the rest of the year and therefore their demand for labor. It is true that the seasonal demands for harvesters can not be filled from all kinds of industrial establishments, the physical strain of harvesting being exceptionally severe upon workmen unaccustomed to it. But a sufficient supply could be obtained to meet harvesting needs; and, by rational organization for the purpose, those who went to the harvest could be returned to their regular work at the season's end. For workers incapable of doing heavy harvest work there are other seasonal employments.

Rationally organized, some such system could be made beneficial alike to the employers of both city and country and to the workers themselves. Nor need it be all work and no play. Going to seasonal employments in organized clubs or groups, and under the supervision of competent officials of this Department. workers who volunteered would soon find that industrially useful system taking on the better characteristics of " personally conducted" excursions.

Experiments in the grain belt would have been made but for the expense of transportation. Inasmuch as railroads could not give special rates to this Department for the promotion of its labor-distribution work without making those rates universal, the Department found it impossible to arrange for transporting workers on practicable terms, no matter how willing the railroads themselves might have been to cooperate. This is one of the reasons why the Department in its annual recommendations repeatedly asked for an amendment to the interstate-commerce law enabling the commission in its discretion to approve such special arrangements as the Department might find it possible to make between itself and railroad companies for the transportation of workers under its official charge or guidance.47

"Department Reports of 1915, pp. 41-42: 1916, p. 128.

PUBLIC LANDS AND EMPLOYMENT.

Another special problem with reference to appointments for profitable employment challenged the attention of the Department in 1915. In the Department's report of that year, this problem was explained and suggestions made for solving it as follows:

The labor-distribution work of this Department should extend to some such development of the natural resources of this country as will tend to make opportunities for workers greater than demands for work and to keep them so. For this purpose further legislation will be necessary. But it need not be either voluminous or revolutionary. Nothing more is required than a judicious utilization of Government lands.

Title to some of the old public domain still remains in the Government. By a recent decision of the Supreme Court Congress is soon to have the power, and to be under an obligation, to treat with land-grant railroads regarding the terms on which large areas of that domain heretofore granted away may be restored. There are extensive areas of privately owned but unused farming land in most or all of the States, which might be acquired by the General Government for promoting labor opportunities as advantageously as other areas have been acquired or retained by it for the creation of public parks. If Congress were to adopt, with reference to those lands, a policy of utilizing them for promoting opportunities for employment, the benefits of the labor-distribution work of this Department, and of State and municipal public employment offices throughout the United States, would be vastly augmented.

For such a policy the homestead laws seem to afford a legislative basis and their history to furnish valuable suggestions. Those laws relieved the industrial congestions of their day by opening the West to workers of pioneering spirit who set up individual homes and created independent farms in waste places. But the day of the individual pioneer is over. From the Atlantic he has moved westward until the Pacific throws him back again into crowded spaces, and new forms of industrial congestion have consequently developed. To the relief of these, the old form of homesteading is not adapted; but the homesteading principle persists. The problem is how to adapt that principle to changed circumstances.

One necessary condition is that the General Government shall retain title to the public lands it already holds. Another condition is that from time to time it shall reacquire title to such lands, formerly owned by it but now privately owned, as are held out of use and may be reacquired upon reasonable terms. Still another condition is that the Government from time to time shall acquire title to such privately owned lands in different States as may be usefully devoted to the purpose of opening opportunities for employment. All this need not be done at once. A satisfactory beginning may be made with public lands already available for the purpose in question. But it is necessary that the Government shall not lightly divest itself of title to any lands it may set aside for labor opportunities. Regulation of private tenures created pursuant to this purpose should fit the circumstances of particular cases. It is therefore suggested that private titles to lands set aside for the indicated purpose be so adjusted by the Department of Labor to its work of labor distribution as to prevent inflation of land values. This precaution is of extreme importance. Wherever inflation of land values might enter in, the proposed method of promoting labor distribution would be obstructed.