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and semi-skilled work; to ascertain the industries and particular plants needing larger supplies of trained workers than could be found through the efforts of the United States Employment Service; to determine the special types of employment in which training appeared to be most needed to meet the existing war emergency; and to organize and promote the adoption by employers of the most practical and useful methods of training.

Organization. Four principal divisions were established within the service as follows:

I. Planning Division: (1) Training Methods Section, in charge of studies of existing training methods in the United States and elsewhere, preparation of plans for instituting and carrying on training in industries and for improving training where being conducted, coordination of methods with the work of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, and uniting all training activities into a comprehensive educational scheme for all industries; (2) Research Section, in charge of collection and analysis of written and printed reports of training for the use of the service; and (3) Information Section, in charge of preparation of bulletins, reports and news articles for publication, and information regarding the work of the service for the use of employers and employees. In this section all editorial work on pamphlets and bulletins was done in collaboration with the Research and Training Methods Sections.

II. Administrative Division: (1) Personnel and Accounts Section, to keep all records of personnel and all accounts of expenditures and allotments; (2) Statistics and Reports Section, to record all operations in the field and prepare tabulated analyses of industrial conditions for the information of the service; and (3) Correspondence and Files Section.

III. Training Division: To supervise the field service by districts as follows: (1) Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts; (2) Connecticut and western Massachusetts; (3) northern New York; (4) southern New York and northern New Jersey; (5) eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey; (6) southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Jefferson and Belmont Counties in Ohio; (7) Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; (8) southern Indiana, southern Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida; (9) Michigan; (10) northern Indiana, northern Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana; (11) southern Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington; and (12) northern Ohio, and Mercer, Crawford and Erie Counties in Pennsylvania.

IV. Dilution Division: To undertake surveys of the war industries, to determine occupations within such industries where the available supply of skilled workers was so limited as to necessitate introduction of less skilled workers, and to promote skilled workers already in such employments to supplement the diminished labor supply to meet war needs. The division had been organized and was about to start its work when on November 11, 1918, the signing of the armistice rendered further operations of the division unnecessary.

Activities of the service.-Before the Training and Dilution Service was established the labor committee of the Advisory Council to the Council of National Defense had set up a voluntary subcommittee to promote interest in industrial training. This committee had carried on a great deal of promotion work, and upon organization of the regular governmental agency, the head of that subcommittee was appointed chief of the Training Division and sent out to find competent men to act as field superintendents of training. The field districts were established on identical territorial lines with those selected by the Ordnance Division of the War Department and the field superintendents were by courtesy of the Ordnance district chiefs provided with quarters in nearly every district, with the added advantage that the daily reports of Ordnance inspectors greatly simplified the problems of finding those war industries and plants most in need of training assistance. Due largely to the assistance of the Ordnance, Engineers, Signal Corps, and other field organizations of the War Department it was possible for the Training and Dilution Service in the few months of its existence before hostilities ceased to secure the training of about a half million industrial workers in the war industries.

An example of effective cooperation between the Ordnance officials of the War Department and the Training Service of the Department of Labor was the work in the Philadelphia district. The Ordnance chief of that district early appreciated the value of industrial training in increasing production and offered assistance to the Training Service then being organized. One of the most experienced training men of America was dispatched to Philadelphia and installed in the Ordnance offices. The district chief of Ordnance assigned five men from his forces to work under the training superintendent, and an intensive survey was made of the whole district, both plant and public-school facilities for training. Fifty-two plants were shortly got into line for various types of training and plant training departments actually instituted in a considerable number of them within the few months preceding the armistice. At the same time 17 large schools and colleges in the same territory were surveyed, stock taken of their equipment suited for mechanical-training purposes, and ar

rangements nearly completed to launch a comprehensive program under which young people could commence apprenticeship courses in a half dozen vitally important war industries, through joint leadership of the United States Training Service, the Ordnance Department, and the Philadelphia public-school authorities. The ending of hostilities, however, obviated the necessity for such extensive action.

The methods of the field service were as simple as the philosophy of industrial training, comprising visits to employers found to be in need of higher average output, explanation of industrial training, analysis of the plant, preparation of plans for setting up training adapted to the special local needs, and assistance to the employer in selecting from his own personnel those fitted to do the training. After the training school had been set up, the superintendent of training visited the plant at intervals, watching the work of the instructors, suggesting improvements, and reporting the progress of training both to the employer and to the director at Washington. The Training Methods Section at Washington, assisted by these reports and the data compiled by the Research Section, worked out plans for more expeditious or more thorough training, which from time to time were sent to all field superintendents and to established training schools conducted by employers.

Because of the lack of organized methods and of trained persons capable of teaching more than from any pronounced objection upon the part of employers, in most plants the training given was quite limited, frequently going no further than teaching new employees a simple process or short sequence of processes. As time passed, however, it became evident that more thorough and comprehensive training offered advantages to both employers and workers, and when hostilities ended many plants were establishing elaborate schemes for training, involving progressive steps from a few days for simple processes to three-year courses for apprentices, including mathematics, design, stresses and weights of materials, and other elements making up a thorough training in the crafts taught. One of the first bulletins issued by the service described these courses as prepared by a large manufacturing plant at Utica, N. Y., where 10,000 square feet of floor space was set apart for training new employees upon a variety of operations, including milling, grinding, profiling, drilling, screw machine operating, inspecting, assembling, general bench working, special and automatic machine operating, barrel making, and lathe turning. At first employees were taught a single operation, but later were given an opportunity to return for training on additional machines, and a program was evolved covering 48 working days, utilizing the facilities of the plant's five tool-making departments, in addition to the training-department space, to give a very intensive

course to promising employees upon special operations. With this course lectures, use of three excellent textbooks, and a night course in mathematics, mechanical drawing, and blue-print reading and interpretation were also given. A third division of the training program took up training of machine and tool adjusters, the pupils being men already experienced in production work. This course led to foremanships.

In another very large plant in Indiana experience with the training department brought about the practice of hiring no employee until he had shown by a test in the training room that he actually did know the work for which employed, and courses covering every phase of work in the factory were outlined and put into practice. This school is still in full operation.

With the termination of active hostilities, 147 training departments were in full operation in war industries, including some of the largest industrial establishments in America. Training ranged from several months to only a day or two, but was steadily being lengthened and improved, the standards being raised and the requirements made more rigid. Immediately after November 11 many war contracts were canceled, and extensive reductions of labor forces began. For a time it seemed that all training departments would be closed, but shortly afterwards it was found that the value of systematic training had only begun to be realized. The assistant director of the Training Service, with the aid of a splendid corps of zealous workers, conducted constructively suggestive scientific analyses of the industrial situation. It became clear that the greatest service of the Department to industrial training lay less in promotion of plant training schools than in the development of sound methods which employers themselves might institute.

Although the dilution work was discontinued, the field service was retained but used principally to gather information for the Planning Division, acting in an advisory way to such employers as desired assistance in setting up training departments but emphasizing the study of existing training and development of improved methods.

After several conferences and preliminary study of various industries, some of war and some of nonwar type, it was determined that during the remainder of the fiscal year the United States Training Service should work entirely upon the preparation of sound methods for use of employers in plant training departments to be published in pamphlet form, except for the maintenance of a smaller field force of competent plant advisers to care for requests from employers for assistance.

Accordingly assignments were made of experts in the fields of shoe and rubber manufacture, foremanship practice, general training methods, foundry practice, garment making, textile methods, piano

manufacture, lithography, and paper-box making. These experts were instructed to proceed to the localities in which were representative plants engaged in their respective specialities, to assemble staffs of competent men, and in the light of their own experience as trainers to construct plans for adequate training of employees for each such industry, the plans to consider (a) training of existing labor forces for higher efficiency and wider knowledge of their employments, (b) training of new labor, and (c) training of experienced workers to be foremen.

Through the hearty cooperation of employers' associations and individual employers, large staffs of technically qualified men, frequently of a type no money compensation could have interested, were assembled; and these men worked literally night and day to adequately cover their important tasks. From early in January until the 30th of June these staffs were engaged in following working processes, checking up their data, comparing results, and slowly evolving material of great practical value to the industries studied.

The following bulletins were completed during the fiscal year, although some of them did not issue from the printing office until after the end of the period.

Bulletin

No.

1. How to start a training department in a factory.

2. A successful apprentice toolmakers' school.

3. British methods of training workers in war industries.
4. Training employees for better production.

5. Training labor for peace time.

6. Labor turnover and industrial training.

7. Industrial training and foreign trade.

8. Some advantages of industrial training.

9. Seven million candidates for training.

10. A business man's experience with industrial training.
11. Efficient training in a large plant.

12. How training departments have bettered production.
13. Industrial training in representative industries.

14. Training in industrial plants.

15. Paper-box manufacturing.

16. Training in the men's suit and overcoat industry.

17. Training workers in the women's cloak and skirt industry.

18. Industrial training in the overall industry.

19. Training for shirt makers.

20. Training in the rubber industry.

21. Training in the shoe industry.

22. Courses of instruction in piano making.

23. Outline courses for instruction in lithography and photolithography.

24. Foundry training methods.

25. Courses of instruction for workers in cotton mills.

26. Foremanship training courses.

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