The Connecticut labor news., 1925-01-03

CTS. Experience has indicated, how ever, than an employment service whose dominant or only objective is service to workers will play com paratively insignificant role in the world of labor. Without the whole hearted support of employers, the service can not fulfill its purpose"
 To remedy this situation, the foun dation's report recommends the estab i lishment of a nationwide system of public employment offices, in which | the Federal, State, and local govern ments would cooperate, and which would be administered under a board made up of the secretary of labor, the secretary of commerce, and the secre- tary of agriculture, with the assistance of a national advisory council and local committee representing employers and employees Such an administration, the report says, ought to insure beyond the possibility of doubt genuinely non-partisan employment service. Opposition to Private Agencies. Some other outstanding facts in the report follow:
 Employers are either indifferent or suspicious of private employment agencies as a class, while workers both organized and unorganized- definitely hostile Most of the em- p1oyers interviewed regarded private agencies as last resort for getting Workmen.
 Organized labor has long been op posed to the private employment bu- reaus, charging that they are used as rike-breaking agencies, that they favor the employer, and that their sole purpose is to exploit the worker.
 Southern states, in an effort to re strict the emigration of negro labor to the north, are through legislation and license fees making it increasing ly difficult, and in some states impos- sible, for private agencies to send workers out of the state
 People Favor Public Service.
 The use of newspaper want adver tisement columns as means of secur- ing employees has become practically but the advantages of this method are almost wholly on the side of the employer.
 Public sentiment favorable to pub lie employment service has been in creasing for 20 years or more, the two most important reasons for this efficient public employment service sentiment being the belief that an will tend to eliminate the abuses of private fee-charging agencies and that 1t will reduce the evil of unem- p1oyment.
 The report traces the history of our experience with municipal, state, and Federal administrations of public em ployment offices, and finds that the evidence is strongly in favor of mak- i ing the state the chief unit of admin istration in combined Federal State local service. The report recommends that. the states take the responsibility for all placement work, and the Fed eral Government render services of general character.
 Workers Can't Be Labeled.
 A great deal of quackery and pseudo science IS being exercised in the technique of selecting applicants for employment, and the greater part of the experimentation and has been carried on in regard to the selection of workers Is l still comparable in the "home ren1- edies" stage of medicine and surgery, according to the report.
 The value of the judgment regard | ing an applicant for work which IS based on the look in his eye, the con- dition of his hands, or the condition of his collar, is minimized in the re- port, as is also the practice of arbi- trarily classifying applicants for em- ployment according to any standard list of types of personalities On this subject the report says:
 The human mind has been grouped by some persons interested in employ ment questions into types that are