Employment Service.

In connection with its employment work the Department has recomImended that the Interstate Commerce Commision be vested with authority to authorize exceptional rates of railroad fare for the purpose of enabling the Department of Labor to place unemployed persons where their labor is in demand.59 Also that labor exchanges engaged in interstate business be placed under the supervision of this Department, and that a Federal Employment Bureau be created. On this general subject the Department in 1918 made the following statements and recommendations with special reference to employment for returning soldiers:

60

61

The Department looks forward to the day when our victorious soldiers will return to their peaceful and customary pursuits and join once more in the upbuilding through industry of the Nation which they have defended by force of arms. Nor is the Department unmindful of the fact that the overwhelming mass of our armies is drawn from the ranks of wage earners, and that when their military task is done these men will return to the ranks of wage earners. It would be an ungrateful Nation, indeed, which did not deem it its first duty to assure to its returned soldiers honorable and profitable employment. It has been the unfortunate experience of the armies of other nations that gratitude has been too frequently confined to words, and men who have risked their lives have too often been released from military life to find an industrial condition where there were more men than opportunities for work. In consequence, such men have frequently submitted to the humiliation of accepting alms. The Department, therefore, believes that the problem of providing profitable employment for our returned soldiers is its first duty. To believe otherwise would be to violate the spirit of the organic act of the Department. “The purpose of the Department of Labor," says this act, "shall be to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment." It is in furtherance of this injunction that the Department has created and extended the United States Employment Service. The duties of this service, in brief, are to bring together the manless job and the jobless man. It is therefore contemplated to use its full resources in minimizing such unemployment as shall occur. And, indeed, if there were an equality between the numbers of men wishing employment and the opportunities for employment, this liaison would be sufficient. Even in the most prosperous periods, however, there is a disparity between the actual number of wage earners and the number that our industries can absorb. Under the most favorable circumstances this unemployed surplus is such as to give rise to grave social and industrial problems. So long as this basic condition persists, it is apparent that the mere bringing together of men and jobs is not sufficient. In order to provide for this surplus, we must do more than seek for employment among opportunities already existing. We must correct the disparity itself. Consequently, the Department faces the further duty of creating new opportunities for employment.62

50 Department Reports of 1915, p. 88; 1916. p. 128.

40 Department Reports of 1914, p 97; 1916, pp. 126–127.

61 Department Reports of 1916, p. 127.

62 Department Reports of 1918, pp. 221-222.

In the year 1919 the Department recommended legislation permanently establishing the Employment Service with liberal appropriations.63

Training Service.

In 1919 the Department recommended legislation to continue the work formerly conducted by the Training Service, with the idea of establishing a means whereby wage earners may continuously advance in industrial growth and development.64

Per Diem Allowances for Subsistence.

Also in 1919 the Department recommended an increase of the per diem allowance for subsistence to officials and employees when traveling, such allowance having continued to be the prewar allowance of $4 a day, which, at the time of the recommendation, was equivalent to only $2.27. The recommendation was for an increase of from $4 to $6.65 No increase has been made.

CONCLUSION OF PART I.

With the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1919, the same fiscal year in which hostilities in the great World War were suspended by the armistice of November, 1918, the first division of this report comes to a close. It has told the story of the long agitation for an executive department devoted to the interests of wageworkers as the Department of Agriculture is to farmers and the Department of Commerce to business interests.

It also explains, though briefly in the text yet fully by footnote references to previous reports, the difficulties of organization and the proposals and accomplishments of the Department in its infancy. No other department of the Federal Government has been organized and developed under such trying circumstances. Before this Department had been fairly organized the greatest war of history broke out in Europe, and in a little while our own cis-Atlantic Republic was involved not only in the industrial turmoil but in the fighting, too. The industrial life of America shifted overnight. To meet that emergency a virtual reorganization of the Department on a gigantic scale in comparison with its peace-time adjustments was forced upon it.

Its business with other departments was multiplied in importance and complexity as well as in volume. Its statistical bureau was plunged into fact-gathering work for warfare instead of peace.

63 Department Reports of 1919, pp. 305-306.

Ibid., pp. 304-305.

Ibid., p. 305.

Its Immigration Bureau had its regular functions of supervising immigration diverted to defensive activities with reference to enemy aliens. The Children's Bureau faced novel and extraordinarily vexatious problems. The Naturalization Bureau was drawn into the work of naturalizing legions of aliens who had come into our military service. In the Office of the Secretary the work of the Conciliation Division assumed new and extremely difficult forms, while the Employment Service expanded from a skeleton organization to a work-finding and man-placing agency of national magnitude intensely organized.

Besides those permanent subdivisions of the Department which were drawn into wider and more difficult channels of service by the war, there were many temporary subdivisions which it became necessary to create and harmonize. Interdepartmental complications called for an interdepartmental labor-adjusting agency; labor disputes in activities involving war efficiency necessitated a board for speedy and unprejudiced decisions upon the merits of such disputes; the coming of women into war industries involved a women's subdi-· vision in the Department; the relations of Negroes to industry made a Negro subdivision necessary; the importance of industrial training, of expert investigations, and of keeping the public properly and promptly informed, demanded subdivisions especially charged with those responsibilities.

All that was done with reference to those and all other activities of the Department during the war may be learned in detail by reference to the preceding part of this report and the annual reports to which it refers for verification and amplification. So also of the peace-time work of the Department prior to the war and of its postwar work since the armistice.

From a dream of American wageworkers more than half a century ago, the Department of Labor, securely established and efficiently organized, holds its intended place in our National Government-a truly American agency for promoting the prosperity of wageworkers in harmony with the just interests of all other workers.

PART II.

Report for 1920.

Having had so many new and perplexing problems thrust upon it in the course of its original organization and in connection with the World War, the Department of Labor was hardly able to adjust itself to its normal peace-time functions until the present fiscal year, beginning with July, 1919, and ending with June, 1920. It was then for the first time fully free to turn to the task of perfecting the one executive department of our Government that deals intimately and sympathetically with the men, women, and children of our country whose living depends wholly upon their own work.

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY.

The Office of the Secretary now comprises the Secretary of Labor, the Assistant Secretary, a News-Release Officer, the Solicitor (who is also Acting Secretary under certain circumstances), the Chief Clerk, the Disbursing Clerk, a Division of Publications and Supplies, an Appointment Division, a Division of Negro Economics, an Advisory Committee on aliem appeals and warrants, a Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation, and the Division of Conciliation.

The Chief Clerk.

Functions.-The Chief Clerk has general supervision of the clerks and employees of the Department and the superintendency of all buildings occupied by the Department in Washington. He supervises expenditures of appropriations for the contingent expenses and rents, and attends to such miscellaneous business in the Office of the Secretary as is not otherwise assigned.

Department quarters.-The Department proper occupies a 9-story modern building at 1712-1722 G Street NW. This is a modern fireproof building containing 63,994 square feet net of floor space. The lease on this building expires on July 1, 1922, but is renewable for five years additional. At the beginning of the fiscal year the Children's Bureau, the United States Employment Service, and the Women's Bureau occupied space in Food Administration Building No. 2. On February 1, 1920, the Public Buildings Commission di

rected the Department to move these bureaus to Fuel Administration Building No. 3, known as temporary building No. 4, in which building they occupy 27,313 square feet net of floor space. At the present time this is adequate for their needs. The occupancy of one of these temporary buildings by bureaus of the Department is viewed with alarm by its officials. The buildings are not fireproof and the valuable records of the Department are in constant danger. Danger to life also, while minimized by the fact that the buildings are only two stories high, is always an outstanding feature. The Department is in accord with and will do everything to assist the Public Buildings Commission in the effort to reduce the amount of rented space occupied by the Government buildings in Washington; but one of two things should be done-the Government should either erect modern fireproof structures to house its employees, or rent sufficient space of that description for the purpose.

During the fiscal year the Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation was provided for in the Homer Building, Thirteenth and G Streets. Upon the failure of Congress to provide for rent for the fiscal year 1921 the Department was forced to request an assignment of space from the Public Buildings Commission, and the commission was allotted 4,662 feet of space in the Hooe Building, 1330 F Street, for this purpose, effective July 1, 1920. This is a modern, fireproof building, and the bureau reports that it is well suited to its use. The local office of the United States Employment Service, which during the previous fiscal year occupied the entire four-story building at 1410 Pennsylvania Avenue, a Governmentowned store and residence building, has, because of the decrease in the appropriation, been forced to curtail its activities, and now uses but two floors in that structure.

Personnel. The Department during the year has been seriously handicapped by inability to secure competent help, and in a number of cases by failure to retain the services of many competent employees whose services were bid for by private employers, offering greater remuneration and opportunities. It is very difficult to secure competent stenographers and typists at the salaries available. It has been the policy of the Department to fill the higher-grade places by promotion. This leaves the vacancies in the lower grades, and it is almost impossible to secure competent employees to fill these vacancies. The Department in its estimates for the fiscal year 1921 requested an increase of 22 clerks to replace the 17 clerks detailed from the various bureaus and to take care of the additional work left by the war services discontinued the first of that year. None of these places were granted. The Secretary's Office has been forced to retain most of these details, and now has 15; the services of these clerks