The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-12-07
POSTAL SERVICE
 HELPFUL ADJUNCT
 TOLAb0R BUREAU
Expansion of the Govern. ment's Public Employ
 ment Service Is Sought

Washington, Dec. 7.-Expansion of the governments public employment service by creation of a separate Blu reau of Employment within the De- partment of Labor is the chief recom-
 mendation of Secretary Wilson's an- nual report made public to-day. The work, it is declared, has outgrown the facilities of the Bureau of Immigra- ton, from where it has been directed. Beginning in a small way in 1907 it now covers the country through the Postoff1ce and other departments. The assistance of the Postofice De- partment, Secretary Wilson says has been particularly helpful. Some sixty thousand postoffices are distribut- ing blanks which the seeker of a job
 may fill out and send through the
 mails free of postage. When applica- tions of employers and employees In
 the same neighborhood enter the same
 postoffice the postmaster brings them together without forwarding the ap- phcations.
 One feature of the employment work emphasized in the report is the De- partment of Labor's cooperation with state and city public employment work.
 The departments aim, it is declared, is to make the work ESQ exclusive as to comprise the whole country geogra ph- ica1ly and to embrace al its industries yet so intensive as to discover every opportunity for work, however ob-
 scure, and to reach with helping hand every wage earner needing em- ployment or wanting better employ ment."
 The departments attitude towards
 strike breaking is set forth in connec- tion with it's public employment policy in these words:
 '"The Department of Labor should not make itself a medium for convey ing information of demands for wage earners where labor disputes are the cause of the demand. That there is
 already a sufficient supply of labor there is as true if 1t is unemployed on account of a dispute over terms as if lit were unemployed from lack of em- ployment opportunities from other causes
 Extension of the service is urged to provide for the employment of the
 aged. Modern industrialism, it is de-
 clared, condemns to the scrap heap too many ab1e-bodied and active-brained
 men, whose only defect is their having
 passed an arbitrary age limit.
 The report relates at length the de-
 partments mediation efforts during
 the year and argues for collective bar
 gaining in matters of employment.
 Large employers are usually incor-
 porated companies with many stock
 holders of diversified industrial con- nections and with boards of directors
 having intercorporate affiliations An
 individual wage worker is weak in
 deed as a bargainer against such em-
 ployers He must take what they of
 fer or go without employment; and
 going without employment means to the wageworker what bankruptcy means to the business man, except that it is immeasurably worse"
 The department was created in the interest of the wage earner-both or ganized and unorganized = and it's great guiding purpose, Secretary Will sons description of it's policy declares, is promotion of the welfare of the wage earners of the United States.
 "In the execution of that purpose" the report says, "the element of fair ness between wage earner and wage earner, between wage earner and em- ployer and between employer and em- ployer and between each and the puD- lie as 8 whole the supreme motive of its activities. The act of it's creation is construed by it not only as a law for promoting the welfare of the wage earners of the United States by inn proving their working conditions and advancing their opportunities for for profitable employment, but as command for doing it so in harmony with the welfare of all industrial class es and all legitimate interests and by methods tending to foster industrial peace through progressively nearer realizations of the highest ideals of industrial justice"