LABOUR EXCHANGES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 48, 25 February 1910, Page 4

LABOUR EXCHANGES.

The Labour Exchanges Bill brought down last session by Mr. Winston Churchill was in many ways a noteworthy measure, and it is highly encouraging to those who think that the care of Che unemployed is a legitimate function of the State to learn that, as a cable message informs us to-day, the new system is working well. The idea of the bill, as Mr. Churchill pointed out at the time, was "to reduce the movement of Labour to a minimum"'; in other words, to prevent waste of time and money and opportunity by supplying all necessary information about the stat« of the Labour market to workless workers, and to employers m need of employees. "The Labour Exchange," said Mr. Churchill, "does not make the movement of Labour more necessary; it does net make it more continuous; it does not make mo-re extra work; I admit it cueates no new employment; but it lias this effect, that instead of men setting out to tramp the road guided merely by chance or rumour, they can go by train and on a certainty. If there is a job for them in the British Isles they can be informed where it is, and they can be conveyed to it as speedily as machinery and civilisation make it possible." The exchanges to be established ■were to be of three classes, affording varying facilities according to the size and population of the towns. But their general object is to enable the workers to find out where to go and where not to go in search of work; to guide young workers to new trades not yet overcrowded; to prevent the exploitation of child labour; and even to advance small sums on loan to those needing assistance in the form of travelling expenses or other expenditure necessary in the quest for work. It is almost superfluous to say that if the Labour Exchanges can accomplish even a small part of what Mr. Churchill expects them to perform, they will confer benefits of almost incalculable value upon the workers at -Home. Of course, labour exchanges have been in existence in England fur a long time past; but they have been purely local institutions. Hitherto there has been no co-ordination between them, no attempt to keep the whole mass of workers in touuh with the whole body of employers throughout the country; and it is because the system is now organised for the first time on a national soale that so much may reasonably be expected of it. The original idea of the system is borrowed, like so many other social and industrial reforms, from Germany, and in that country the Labour Exchanges have long since proved •themselves a great power for good in adjusting the labour supply to the demand, and bringing remunerative employment within the reach of the workless. The Central Labour Exchange of Berlin costs only about £5,000 a yeaj- to run; and in 1907 it not only found work for nearly 9(i,000 men and women, but provided shelter and other forms of assistance for over 155,000 workers in search of employment. In the main hall of the Exchange there is seating accommodation for 1400 and standing room for 000 more. The applicants are classified and grouped round sign-posts labelled according to the kind of employment required. The telegraph and telephone are in constant requisition, and as the calls for workers and replies to inquiries come in the officials of the Exchange select the applicants, with due regard to ord«r of precedence. While the men are waiting, they can get their boots mended or their clothes repaired for a nominal charge, and food is supplied at an extremely low rate. The women arc kept separate from the men, but they get similar treatment; and some attempt is made to graduate the work supplied in accordance with the physical strength and experience of the workers. The universal testimony of all political and racial authorities in Germany is that unese Labour Exchanges have been a blessing to the country; and though we cannot expect that they will, unaided, solve the portentous problem of the unemployed, yet there is no doubt that they helD to weed out the loafer and the unemployable, and they do a great deal to reduce the existing industrial chaos to manageable dimensions by bringing the worker and the employer into direct contact, and thus promoting the orderly organisation of the whole industrial system.