New Britain herald., 1919-11-12
K. Of [. HELPING
 SOLDIERS GET JOBS
More Than 3O,00O Men Have
 Been Placed

lars year! That is lot of money l u represents the yearly earnings of [ 39,312 discharged soldiers who have been placed in the professions and the trades in the northeastern states through the efforts of the Knights of Columbus Not one of these men has l been sent to a job that pays him less than SIS a week-the Knights of Co., 1 lumbus do not consider offers of less l than that sum for the work of a re- l turned soldier The story of what has been done in l 15 days by the Knights of Columbus ! to open the door of opportunity to l overseas men reads like romance of the modern business world. First of all, the Knights of Colum bus sent out an army of soldier and sailor canvass CTS. They visited 24S,384 employers fin the New England states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware nndw Maryland. They found 70,023 jobs waiting for capable men. The work s. in the northeastern states constitutes about one-half of the national effort of the Knights of Co., lumbus. The statistics for the other sections of the country have not yet been completed.
 Peter w. Collins tells the story~and he Is director general of the recon structlon and employment service of the Knights of Columbus He is proud of what has been accomplished He says:
 Only d Portion
 Tn the northeastern states alone We have found employment for 39.312 men. Probably an equal number have hccn placed in other sections of the country. In the northeastern terri tory the average, wage is SPA a week The total annual income for the 39,- &12 men, therefore, is $49.061,376, or almost S50,000,o0O. In the jobs found hy our canVassers there are repre- sentcd 131 varied occupations and professions. Several men were found capable of filling s7,000 year va cancies discovered by our employme ent scouts. We rejected all consideration of jobs that offered less than SIS week. We did not want any man who had risked his life for his coun- try to accept less than that. for we figured that was the smallest sum on which he could live properly and cleanly IS an American citizen.
 We were astonished to find that more than 800 of the first 5000 em- ploycrs listed as needing workmen wanted to pay only from $1 to s12 a week These were what might be called silk stocking jobs and we didn't bother with them. We went after the cotton sock and beefsteak and potatoes stuff for men. And we found it to an extent that exceeded our expectations. We discovered early in the game that many of the men had become imbued with ambitious thoughts. They wanted better jobs than they had had before they went to war. We sympathized with their as- pirations. However, many of them were not fitted for the kind of work they wanted, so. in .ordcr to put our sympathetic understanding Ito pracu- cal use, we employed teachers and gave vocational teaching and educa- tional guidance to 21,113 soldiers.
 Under this training nearly all qualified for positions in higher fields than they had known before they went to France. While we rejected several thousand so-called~ opportunities not worthy of the men, We found that we had openings for more men than ap- piled for work. Employers had places for 7O,O23 men: there were 62, ,211 ap- plicants on our books. -G.t..+ s :" -.
 Help for the Wounded.
 Wounded men, of courses enlisted our most lest efforts to be hefpful We were successful in finding more ' than 400 openings in the jeWelry trade---an occupation suited to men who had been crippled. Unfortunate ly we could not find more than 53 mer suitable for that kind of work. Re quests came to us to supply more thar 1000 tailOrS. Only one man was dis covered, who was a tailor, and said so That one went to work at $60 week After that we kept on looking fo tailCrS, but without much success. I SC ,1ns incredible, but we could no find even one locksmith among our ap plicants yet we know of more than
 hundred openings for men in tha trade. It was the same with shoe makers.
 Now. out of those 62,211 me
 whom we listed as applicants ther - must have been at least one who was
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