4. Prescribing the maximum fee which an employment agent may charge in any case for assistance in securing employment for any

person.

5. Placing all employment agencies in the State under the supervision of the State bureau of labor statistics, etc.

In 1903 a law was enacted with the above-defined end in view. It provided that no fee should be charged prior to the time the assistance is given; that fees should be returned to the applicant when he failed through no neglect of his own to secure the position; that a maximum fee of 10 per cent of the first month's wages should be prescribed; that the tax or license collector of each county, or city, and county, should furnish to the commissioner of labor, quarterly," the name and address of each employment agent; that each private agency shall keep a written record giving certain required information, and that the commissioner of labor and his deputies shall have access to the same. On July 25, 1904, the supreme court declared unconstitutional the section which prescribes a maximum fee at 10 per cent of the first month's wages. The ground taken by the court was that the private employment-agency business was as legitimate and the profits no more to be limited than those of any other business. The effect of the decision upon the law was to leave it uncertain whether the whole law was made nugatory or only the section in question. The legislature assumed the latter to be the case, and by an act approved March 18, 1905, repealed the condemned section and amended another.

A great deal of discontent has been expressed by various citizens with the present methods of private employment agencies in San Francisco. These agencies do an enormous business, nearly 70,000 positions being reported as having been secured by one office in one year.

There are two municipal free employment offices in the State, namely, one at Sacramento and one at Los Angeles. These make no report to the State commissioner, and their operation in each case is determined by the city council, to which they are responsible.

SACRAMENTO.

The office at Sacramento was established December 29, 1902, the trade unions being chiefly instrumental in the matter. The ordinance creates a municipal labor bureau with a commissioner at the head, whose duties are simply those of a superintendent of an employment office. He is required to keep a register of applicants for employment and the kind of work desired, and another for those seeking help, the date of application, and whether or not the application was filled. The city is required to provide an office and to pay all expenses up to $50 per month, not including the salary of the commissioner.

The term of office of the commissioner is two years. His appointment is made by the mayor, with the consent of the board of trustees, and his salary is $100 per month.

In the first two years the office found positions for 2,080 persons, at a cost of $3,600, nearly $1.75 per position secured.

The commissioner is endeavoring to reach outside of the city, especially to all points within a radius of 100 miles. He reported in 1905 the labor supply as in excess of the demand; that only 10 per cent of the positions filled were one-day jobs; that skilled labor was about 20 per cent of the total; that in 90 per cent of the cases definite information was obtained as to positions secured, and that there were nine private agencies in the city.

LOS ANGELES.

The Los Angeles free employment office was opened in January, 1893, and is therefore, with the exception of the Ohio offices, the oldest in the United States. Its organizers were union labor leaders who were moved with pity for the dupes of private agencies. They had never heard of the Ohio system nor of any other free public offices, but determined to drive out the private agencies by free competition. It continued as a free employment office, conducted by the labor unions, until its support was assumed by the city and county. It so remained down to January 17, 1905, the county and city each paying $50 per month for its support. At this time the city adopted civil service, and as the county continued to elect all officers the city assumed the support of the employment office, complaint having been previously made that the city derived most of the benefit.

The novel feature of the Los Angeles office, the one thing that distinguishes its operation from all others, is the fact that it charges the nominal sum of 25 cents for every position actually secured. This has been its practice since November 30, 1904, and the results are gratifying from every point of view. The method followed is briefly this: No person is permitted to register unless there is a job in prospect which he is willing to accept. He then deposits his 25 cents, for which he receives a receipt like the following, of which a duplicate is kept in the register:

Received of

twenty-five cents, being the fee required for regis

tration upon the city labor bureau register, authorized to be collected under ordinance

No. 10,446 (N. S.), approved January 16th, 1905.

Manager, City Labor Bureau.

The applicant must go at once to secure the work, and whether successful or unsuccessful he must within a few hours let the office# know the result, otherwise he forfeits the fee. This small charge does not hinder anyone from the use of the office.

Cases of destitution are by no means infrequent, and these need all the more the services of such an office. Accordingly in such cases another form is provided, of which the following is a copy:

To the Manager of the City Labor Bureau:

No.

DEAR SIR: In accordance with the conditions of registration required by ordinance No. 10,446 (N. S.), I herewith notify you that I am "unable to pay the registration fee of twenty-five cents in advance," for the privilege of registering on your books, but I do hereby agree to pay to you the said fee out of the first money I earn under the registration made this day.

I herewith indorse above statement.

City Clerk.

Applicant.

This is also printed in duplicate, and a carbon copy kept in the register as a voucher for the manager just as in the preceding case. It is not honored by the manager until countersigned by the city) clerk.

The manager states that about half of the positions secured are short jobs, lasting but a day or two, and that if it is for less than two days he gets the man another job without additional charge. This is a matter of questionable expediency, or certainly would be, if the labor demand were stronger than the supply, for the reason that it would tend to encourage shiftlessness. However, the reverse is the case in Los Angeles in the winter time, while in the summer the conditions are nearly even. As many as 50 men, frequently a larger number, could be found out of employment at almost any time throughout the winter. The men who patronize the municipal employment office are generally married, and at least in 75 per cent of the cases residents of the city or farmers who come in to spend the winter. The fee has had the effect of driving away from thep public office practically all of the floating element, who, since they can not get its services free, prefer to hang around private agencies. There are 70 of the latter in Los Angeles, 11 being Japanese, and competition is lively.

The manager of the municipal office has one helper, and is thus, enabled to get away from the office and to interview employers/ That his competitors are sometimes unscrupulous is seen in the following typical incident.

The municipal office sent a man to a contractor for work. The manager of a private office heard of it and sent word to the con

"

tractor that the man was sent by him; the contractor accordingly withheld the private agent's fee from the wages and probably was permitted to retain a portion for his trouble. Such cases are continually occurring, and indiscriminate condemnation of private agencies is often heard in California. It is scarcely to be wondered at that a strong conviction exists in the State that they should be legislated out of existence.

The manager makes a monthly and also an annual report to the city council. The annual report includes a monthly account of the receipts and expenses, and a statement of the number of applications and the orders filled. No record is kept of the applications for help. Practically the same is true of the applications for employment, since these are identical in number with the positions secured. The report for the year ending November 30, 1905, is as follows:

Deducting receipts from expenses leaves $929.50, the amount that the office has cost the city, or an average of 44.6 cents per position secured.

The gains effected by charging a fee for each position secured may be thus enumerated:

1. There is a gain in the ease of securing accuracy of returns, since a man is reasonably sure to return for his fee if he does not secure the work.

2. There is a gain in the saving of expense to the public. A charge of 50 instead of 25 cents would probably have made the office almost self-supporting.

3. The Los Angeles experiment indicates, as one would expect, that the self-respecting laborer prefers to pay something for the service, while the vagrants will leave whenever a fee is charged. That they go to private agencies where a still higher fee is charged does not affect the question, since the latter have various ways of making their places attractive, in the way of saloons, glowing promises, etc.

CONNECTICUT.

The original act creating the free employment system of Connecticut was passed in 1901. There was a revision of this act in the following year, and two amendments have since been added.

The bill as originally presented called for the establishment of three offices-at New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, respectively; but before it became a law two other cities were added, namely, Waterbury and Norwich. A comparison of the records presented by all of the offices will show that the latter cities are by no means equal in importance with the others. In fact, they were included in the terms of the act mainly to appease local interests, Waterbury being in the western and Norwich in the eastern part of the State. The first three mentioned present a much stronger industrial demand. This statement explains why the average cost per position secured is so high, and thus accounts for the chief criticism of the Connecticut system.

It will be observed that only the first section and the first amendment of the Connecticut law have anything to do with the free employment office, the greater part of the act being directed toward the regulation of private offices. This leaves the details of the management of the public offices, the form of applications, the data they shall require, and the frequency of reports to the commissioner's office. It is thus a strongly centralized system.

The Connecticut statute is not aimed against the private agency as a business, but against its evils. This is seen in the small license fee, which is no financial handicap in competition with the public agency, and in the cordial relations existing between the better class of private agencies and the officials of the commissioner's office. It is a measure of official protection to such agencies, moreover, that the registers are open to the inspection of the commissioner and his agents; for it is only thus that irregularities can be discovered and checked among the evilly inclined, and there is no advantage arising to the public offices as a result of this inspection. The superintendents are not required by law to assist in this supervision, but at the same time they are supposed by the commissioner to exercise “a general oversight" and "to keep the office at the capitol informed as to conditions.”

There was no general demand for the passage of this law. The gratifying results from similar laws in other States had made it seem desirable that such a law should be enacted for Connecticut. The report of the commissioner of labor for 1899 contained an extended argument in favor of such laws, and a personal investigation was made of the offices in Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin. In 1900 the Connecticut State branch of the Federation of Labor passed a resolution instructing its legislative committee to use its influence toward establishing a similar system in that State. The principal opposition in the legislature came from agricultural sources, but the system has proved so helpful to farmers that they are now among its most ardent supporters.