THE STORY OF UNCLE SAM
The Department of Labor
FOUR
In his annual report for the year 1918, the Secretary of Labor declared that “had the Department of Labor not existed at the beginning of the war, Congress would have been obliged to create such a department.” During that year, mainly under the stress of war conditions, the number of bureaus in this department increased from four to thirteen, and immense efforts were put forth by it to promote the smooth running of industrial machinery at home, so that the military forces might successfully prosecute their great task abroad.
In normal times the chief purpose of the Department is, as stated in the Act creating it, “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage-earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.” To this end the Department collects, digests and publishes statistics and information concerning labor at home and abroad; supervises the admission of immigrants into the country and their naturalization; and aids in the adjustment of disputes between workmen and their employers.
One of the most interesting branches of this Department is known as the Children’s Bureau. The law provides that this Bureau “shall investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the questions of infant mortality, the birth rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of children, employment, and legislation affecting children in the several states and territories.” The Children’s Bureau has been especially identified with efforts to secure effective laws restricting child labor, and it furnished the machinery for administering the United States Child-Labor Law which went into operation September 1, 1917, only to be set aside the following June, when it was pronounced unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. The Court unanimously agreed, however, that child labor is an evil, and Federal legislation on this important subject not inconsistent with the Constitution will doubtless be eventually enacted.
A notable development of the war was the United States Employment Service. The Department of Labor had previously maintained an employment service in a small way under the Bureau of Immigration for the purpose of helping newly-arrived immigrants to find work. During the war this expanded into a vast organization for mobilizing the labor resources of the country. About eight hundred public employment exchanges were opened, and labor was moved from place to place as required, whether for war industries, for harvesting the crops, or for other purposes. During the year 1918 nearly two million wage-earners were placed by this service in positions for which they were qualified and in which their services were needed. After the armistice an important branch of the work consisted in finding positions for discharged soldiers. As a means of recruiting workers for the industries of the country and helping solve the problem of unemployment, this service is one of the most promising undertakings of the Government, but its future depends upon further legislation by Congress.
During the last year before the war began in Europe the number of immigrants admitted to the United States was 1,218,480. The laws relating to immigration and the Chinese-exclusion laws are administered by a branch of the Department of Labor known as the Bureau of Immigration. Immigration stations are maintained at the principal seaports, where physical, mental and moral defectives, as well as persons likely to become public charges or afflicted with contagious diseases, polygamists, anarchists, contract laborers and Chinese are eliminated. The most important immigration station is at Ellis Island, in New York Harbor.
The Bureau of Naturalization, besides supervising the work of the courts in naturalizing aliens, is in charge of an extensive campaign of educating and Americanizing prospective citizens.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 11, SERIAL No. 183
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.