EMPLOYMENT MANAGING

Realizing the chance to create more efficient methods of hiring and "firing" labor, the Government is introducing a new type of experts, to be known as employment managers. In spite of a certain overemphasis that has tended to make us regard somewhat cynically efficiency experts in general, the need for them in all matters pertaining to labor is becoming increasingly apparent. While the selling of material commodities has become organized to the highest point, the selling of labor has been done for the most part in a completely haphazard manner. Trade unions have had some effect; private and semi-public labor exchanges have helped towards efficiency, but they have in general signally failed to organize the labor market even in the skilled trades, and have completely passed by the great mass of unskilled labor. Even at the present time when industry is at an unexampled flood and workmen are in the greatest demand, there is much unrest and discontent due to this disorganization. In one place there may be an overwhelming demand for men of a certain trade but no men to take the jobs, so that less skilled men have to be used; while in another town there may be many men of the same trade who do not know where to turn for their own kind of work and are therefore forced into unskilled labor. Workmen are hired largely on chance and necessarily a large percentage are bound to be unsatisfactory, whereupon they are promptly discharged and new men taken on in an equally careless way. This creates a very large turnover of labor that is wasteful to the employers and demoralizing to the men. Now that the Government is an unusually large employer and has on hand, the business of winning the greatest war in history all avoidable waste of material and time and all needless stirring up of the laborers are not to be tolerated.

The Government has made the right start towards meeting these conditions with its new system of employment managers. These men will be trained at business schools and colleges,--some here at the University,--and will have it their special task to solve the problems of labor in the Government's industries. Efficient hiring and "firing" will be their immediate duty, but to do this well they will have to obtain an exhaustive knowledge of labor conditions from every standpoint. They will see the necessity of organization, and will be in the best position to develop the methods of attaining it. The labor problem has become too big and too important to be handled as it has been heretofore, and the Government has wisely taken the first step towards giving it efficient and intelligent treatment.