The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1913-01-21
From the Chicago Tribune.

A sEEDY, bedraggled individual Is
~ hailed before the judge. A police
4 \ man testifes he found the man
prowling in a hallway searching for
place to sleep. The judge inquiries whether
the man has a job. He has not. Money!
He has not. Friends? No-his home Is
1000 miles away. So the court pronounces
the man a vagrant and sends him to
prison.
The solution for vagrancy i'll the United
States lies not in prison sentences, 1t lies
NOT in bounding the jobless and helpless
individual. 1t lies in the intelligent, Ell
ficient handling of the problems Oh uheh-
ployment. in the abolition of the agencies
which create vagraney.
In most European cities the jobless man
concerns the government. The German
worker who loses his job goes to the mu-
nicipal labor exchange of his city ana
lin a short time work is found for him.
He does not pay cent for 1t. judgment
is used in the work and in the place OF
work selected for him. A man in south
Cerman city will be found a job In
neiehboring town. He will not be shot
across the country 1900 miles from his
family to take work for the short period
of slackness in his own trade.
In the United States the man who loses
his Job becomes subject for speculation
By the ignorant and inefficient, If not
actually thievng, labor agent. He be-
comes the prey and gamble of the private
employment shark, and is ultimately
forced to become a vagrant.
There are 900 private employment agen-
cies in New York city alone. Chicago
has hundreds of them. So has every other
industrial center. They cover the en-
tire country like spider web. The au-
thorities license and supervise these agen-
cies. This is done to guard the applicant
for employment from imposition fraud
and misrepresentation. 1t is successfui
sometimes; most often not. For these
agencies can only thrive upon fraud ana
instrumentation. The trick is to make
this fraud and Misrepresentation STICK
within the confines of legality. In this
they succeed admirably.
Every private employment agency spe-
cializes in a certain kind of labor. one
supplies a railroad with section hands,
Another supplies men to lumber mills. A
third speciaIizes in construction help. They
are all out for the 50 fee which they
charge for every job. Their business,
therefore, is to place" men. The man
specializing In jobs on railroads will send
every applicant who has 81 to pay for the
Job to work on the railroad, regardless
of his fitness or unfitness. If the man Is
| free two days later, that is his lookout
not the agents. He gave him job. 1t
was up to the man to hold it.
| Daily thousands of jobless men are
''paced" by these agents. The men are
made to think they have gotten something
worth while. In reality, however, they
have been ruined. They have been taken
| hundreds and sometimes thousands of
miles from their homes They are put to
work at occupations to which they are
NOT used and in surroundings which are
detrimental to their health. Instead of
being placed. they are displaced. They
are dislodged from their sphere of indus
| try and removed from friends for months,
ard sometimes years.
| a large share of the vagrant population
| in this country is drawn from among the
| men who have at one time or another
beer dislodged from their niche in in
dustry by an employment agent who for
the sake of the 81 fee has sent them
across many states to take a permanent
| job which was not permanent. The job
less man is not nearly so helpless in his
liome town or near his home town as he
| is hundreds of miles away from the place
where he is known. Penniless in strange
town, he is arrested and jailed as vag-
rant.
Gambling in a mans wages is crime
land is punished by the community But
| the gambling in the fortunes and even
lives of thousands Of helpless men BY