YOUNG MAN'S TASK.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1909, Page 13

YOUNG MAN'S TASK.

DIRECTOR OF LABOUR EXCHANGE. From a somewhat dingy and sparsely furnished room, hidden away in the Board of Trade offices in London, Mr. W. H. Beveridge, whose appointment as director of Labour Exchanges under the new Act was announced on 12th October, has already commenced to organise the system by which it is hoped to reduce unemployment (wrote a Londoner recently). The new official is a young man with a 'boyish face, clear complexioned and fair, a pair of steady grey eyes, and the quiet, clear accented speech of the Balliol graduate. He had a brilliant career at Oxford, ajid Charterhouse before this was proud of him as a scholar. When he came down from Oxford he took the position of sub-warden at Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, where he learned his first practical lesson of the crying notds of the unemployed. He went among the workers, listened to their stories, and was careful to ascertain the ' characteristics of the work shirker. Since then he has acted as chairman of the Committee of the Central (Unemployed) Body, which established the labour exchanges in London. He has published a standard book on unemployment which urged the necessity for general laboxir exchanges. The work before Mr. Beveridge is tremendous. He is engaged now at his office from ten in the morning xmtil eight ait night, and then afterwards at his own home. At present he has 9000 applications ior appointments before ' him to be dealt with. When th« labour exchange system is in full swing, 800 officials will be under his control. Before the Bcheme is properly qrganised, 240 labour exchanges wili have to be established, but only half that number will be set_ ap during the present financial year in the great industrial centres. Roughly speaking, the number of exchanges will be split up as follows : — Thirty to thirty-five for towns of 100,000 inhabitants. Forty to forty-five for towns of 50,000 inhabitants. One hundred and thirty to one hundred and sixty for towns of 25,000 inhabitants. § Twenty to thirty for docks and casual labour centres. Each exchange will have a staff varying from a single clerk caretaker to a sJSr.ff of a dozen at a divisional clearing exchange. Salaries will eventually cost approximately £95,000 per annum.