Dr. Richard T. Ely, Professor of Political Economy in the Univer-sity of Wisconsin, in his book on "Socialism and Social Reforms," page 331, says:

"Another method of giving at least an assured minimum income to large numbers, in fact, to all who can work, is through provision of employment. The private employment agency is not equal to the test. The evils connected with it are such that it perhaps produces more harm than good; and an agent of the United States Department of Labor, who has observed its workings, has declared that the employment agency is the vilest vulture that ever preyed upon a decaying body. It assists in the reduction of wages by bringing men to places where there is already a superabundant supply of labor, and in every way ministers to greed and lust. The State of Ohio has established public employment offices in several large cities, and the claim is made for these that they have produced beneficial results. New England has also established similar institutions with like beneficial results."

In an address before the World's Fair Labor Congress in Chicago, August 30, 1893, one of the speakers said, with a perhaps not unnatural bitterness:

"Another feature of modern industrialism which is proving a potent force in the disintegration of families, is the employment agency. It is the auctionblock of the wage-system. While New York City is threatened with breadriots, while in Buffalo and every industrial center in the State of New York, factories are closed or running five hours per day, five days per week, West Madison street has a flaming sign-"4,000 men wanted in New York State to work on railroads; good wages; free transportation." These men pay the employment office one dollar each, possibly their last dollar. The railroads transport the 4,000, its officials knowing at the time they want only 350. But the presence of the 4,000 will make it easy to make their own terms with the 350 they want. The employment office has made $4,000; the railroad corporation has an overcrowded labor market as a menace to the refractory.

"The remainder of these men are a thousand miles from the homes they left, buoyant with the hope of soon earning some money to send to the wife and babies. Out of work, away from home, they degenerate morally and physically until, in Chicago there is another batch of deserted wives, in New York another set of tramps. The employment agencies of this and all other cities are the vilest vultures that ever preyed upon a corpse. Their victims are the men who are out of work and want work. They make most when times are hardest and their victims can least afford to be fleeced. The farther they can ship their victims the better they like it; and, as the lowa and Missouri Bureaus of Labor Statiscs have shown, the corporations of the west would rather give free transportation to five hundred men from a distance than to employ the one hundred men they need directly from the neighborhood of the work to be done. The farther they can get a man from home. the better terms they can make with him."

FUTILITY OF ATTEMPTING TO REGULATE PRIVATE AGENCIES.

EXPERIENCE IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Massachusetts has legislated for many years with a view to regulating and controlling private employment agencies.

Section 26 of chapter 102 of the public statutes provides that "whoever, without a license therefor, establishes or keeps an intelligence office for the purpose of obtaining or giving information concerning places of employment for domestics, servants or other laborers, except seamen, or for the purpose of procuring or giving information concerning such persons for or to employers, or for the purpose of procuring or giving information concerning employment in business, shall pay a fine of ten dollars for each day such office is so kept;" and by section 27 of the same chapter it is provided that "the mayor and alderman of any city, except Boston, and in Boston the police commissioners, and the selectmen of any town may, for the purposes mentioned in the preceding section, grant licenses to suitable persons, subject to the provisions of sections 124 to 127 inclusive, and may revoke the same at pleasure. They shall receive one dollar for each license so granted." The provisions of sections 124 to 157 inclusive, referred to in this section, relate to the form of license, the manner in which it shall be recorded, etc., and the month in each year within which the license shall take effect. Licenses must be renewed annually. In chapter 311 of the acts of 1888 it is provided that "whoever as proprietor or keeper of an intelligence or employment office, either personally or through an agent or employé, sends any woman or girl to enter (as an inmate or a servant) any house of ill-fame or other place resorted to for the purpose of prostitution, the character of which could have been ascertained by him on reasonable inquiry, shall for each offense be punished by fine of not less than fifty nor more than two hundred dollars."

The police commission of Boston, acting under the provisions of this law, attach conditions to the licenses issued to private employment agencies tending to regulate the fees to be charged, etc. This condition is as follows:

"Every licensed keeper of an intelligence office shall be entitled to receive of each female, at the time of application for a place, a sum not exceeding 50 cents; and of each male who may make such application a sum not exceeding $1; and of each person making application for female servants a sum not -9 L. S.

exceeding 50 cents, and for a male servant a sum not exceeding $1, for which a receipt shall be given at the time; and in case no servant or place of employment is obtained within six days from the date of payment, the money shall be refunded, except as follows: If either male or female shall be sent to a situation, and make an engagement, and go to work, and for any reason shall not remain at the place, neither party shall be entitled to have the payment returned.'

The board of police also prescribes a form of receipt to be given to male applicants for situations, which is as follows:

Received of Mr.

one dollar in advance to pay for procuring him a situation for work; said amount to be refunded to him on presentation of this receipt, if no situation is obtained for him at the expiration of six days from this date."

In 1891 the legislature passed a law, of which sections 1 and 2 are the most important, as follows:

"Section 1. The keeper of an intelligence office shall not receive or accept any sum of money from a person seeking employment through the agency of such office, unless employment of the kind demanded is furnished.

"Section 2. If a person receiving employment through the agency of an intelligence office is discharged within ten days from the time of entering upon such employment, and such discharge is not caused by the inability, incompetency or refusal of such person to perform the work required, or by other fault of the person employed, the keeper of such intelligence office shall refund to such person on demand five-sixth of any sum paid to such keeper by the employer on account of such employment."

The law provides a penalty of from $25 to $50 for each violation.

The system, rigid as it appears to be, does not work well, and many employment agencies evade its provisions. The teachers' employment agencies of Boston, for instance, charge 5 per cent of the first year's salary of each applicant for whom a situation is secured, and evade the law by claiming that they are dealing with professional service, and not with labor. Mr. Waldin, in his report for 1893, says:

"Registration offices under state or municipal control, by means of which the employing class, and those seeking employment may be put into communication with one another, are earnestly advocated by many as a step toward relieving the distress caused by constantly recurring periods of unemployment * and their establishment in Massachusetts has been under discussion."

* * *

EXPERIENCE IN OHIO.

The Hon. Samuel M. Jones, mayor of the city of Toledo, in his second annual message to the common council of that city, delivered October 24, 1898, recommends the repeal of all licenses to employment agencies. His language follows:

"You should at once repeal the ordinance licensing employment agencies, and make the carrying on of the business of an employment bureau within the city limits unlawful."

The State of Ohio is unique in having a law providing for free employment agencies in certain cities, of which Toledo is one, and the city bears the expense of conducting the office. The absurdity of licensing a private enterprise to carry on the same class of work in

competition with the city is apparent. But the infamy of this sort of business can only be understood when we reflect that our people do not go to an employment agency to seek for work save as a last extremity, and that the city should then license an individual to make a profit out of this distressed class of people is a flagrant wrong that should be stopped as soon as it is possible to enact the necessary legislation. The state has made a most commendable beginning in the right direction by establishing free employment agencies. Let us supplement this work by enlarging the field of their operations in every possible way so that all of the people may contribute their mite toward finding employment for those who are in need of it.

Mr. A. D. Fassett, Superintendent of Free Public Employment Office for Toledo, Ohio, for 1896, reports as follows:

"All of the cities permit competing paid agencies, which do a large business, regardless of the fact that the state agency does its work without expense to either the parties seeking work or wanting work done.

"The opposition thrives on the misfortunes of others. When I took charge of the Toledo office last July, there were four paid employment offices doing business here. There is no more conscience in the make-up of these offices than is to be found in flint rock. The element of gain enters into every transaction. For the fee that is in it one of these agencies would send an innocent young girl to a bagnio or a harlot to a virtuous family. When times are hard, the applicant for work is told the truth at the state agency that there is nothing for them. He is told at the paid agency that there are some good jobs for which a deposit is required. If the money is forthcoming he is told that this pays for the services of the agency in trying to place him. One out of a hundred, possibly, so paying, gets a job. The public never hears of these robberies, because the victims are poor, in no position to secure redress. If they should apply to the authorities they learn that the agency is licensed by the city and in turn authorized to perpetrate such outrages. Herein lies one of the principal drawbacks to the successful operation of the state's agencies. It is difficult for the state agent to reach the ear of the public, as the paid agencies advertise liberally and the state agencies do not. However, the newspapers of Toledo, especially the Bee and the News, have rendered me much assistance. The superintendent of the agency should place his heart in the work, as few have his opportunities for doing good. Without the assistance of city legislators, who could if they would, outlaw the paid agencies, he ought to be able to drive them out of business."

By reference to preceding pages relating to the experience of France in establishing free public offices for the relief of the unemployed in Paris and other cities, it will be observed that the first attempt to create such offices was in the form of a bill which the Chamber of Deputies rejected and referred to the Municipal Council of Paris as being a matter for local rather than national legislation. The Municipal Council failed to act upon the measure but eventually a decree was promulgated by Louis Napoleon, possessing the force of law, the intent of which was to license and regulate the private employment registries of Paris, Under the restrictions of this decree these offices were subsequently operated, until the necessity for placing the business wholly under government management and control was finally fully recognized and the free public offices established.

OTHER OPINIONS.

The disfavor in which all schemes for licensing and regulating private employment agencies are held by labor men, is illustrated by the following extract from an address delivered at one of the “Hull House" economic conferences some time ago.

"With few exceptions the methods employed by legislators have been the usual ones, 'regulation.' It is curious that when the members of a state legislature are shown an evil, their first thought is to ‘regulate' it by making it a source of income to the state. There was a bill before the Colorado legislature to establish free state employment agencies, but that bill was defeated by one which promised to regulate by dividing the spoils.

"Colorado has a state law requiring employment agents to give a bond of two thousand dollars against fraudulent treatment of customers; and the cities further 'regulate them by making them pay one hundred dollars license tax. Colorado has now twenty-one employment agencies; most of them in Denver.

"The Minnesota legislature likewise wants some of the last pennies wrung from the pockets of the idle workmen by employment agencies.

"The New York State legislature and the city of New York have each devised successful divisors, and now share in the proceeds of human-labor. All this is, however, of no benefit to the work-seeking men. If it harass the employment agent by making him give up some of his gain in the form of license, then must he wrench the more from his victims to keep even. It also induces him to send laborers to the remotest possible point as an insurance against their return to prosecute him.”

The following extracts from the same address are given as touching the general subject:

"The interstate character of the business should interest Congress and a bill, similar to the Blair Labor Bill, but incorporating the employment office features of the Ohio law, should be passed. If Congress doubts its jurisdiction, let it investigate the matter and see what percentage of the droves of men shipped from state to state by employment agencies find employment when they get to their destination. Let them learn for themselves how many miners and railroad laborers, lured by employment agencies and carried free by the railroads to Iowa, Minnesota, Wyoming and Organ, have found there a crowded labor market, or a strike, or a pending reduction of wages, and been forced to tramp penniless and hungry back to their families and the places they started from.

"Everywhere in our land are 'Signal Service Stations' equipped at great expense to watch the wind blow. At one-tenth of the expense employers of labor and idle labor seeking employment could be brought together legitimately in every town and hamlet from Maine to California without expense to either. No fault is found with the 'Signal Service Stations;' but how much more human happiness would grow out of the Labor Signal Station.

"Even if the employment agencies of the cities were as honest as they are dishonest, they could be of no benefit to the laboring man out of employment unless he has money to pay the fees. The man who needs a situation most is the man without a dollar. To him the employment agency, honest or dishonest, may as well be in the New Jerusalem. Idleness is perhaps the greatest source of crime, and crime is the most expensive luxury the states and nation are enjoying just now."