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Show FREE EMPLOYMENT BUREAUS. Go eminent free employment bureaus bu-reaus are promised for the near future. fu-ture. The necessity of government invasion pi that field of human ac- tivity Is explained by the Butte Post which says that in litigation now in progress in New York state to test the constitutionality of the contract and alien labor law, it has been clearly proved that contractors for labor from lumberjacks and minors to men who work on railroad sections and dig sewers and subways in the large cities will not employ independent inde-pendent laborers, that is, men who come as individuals seeking work They prefer to do all their employing through padrones and labor employment employ-ment bureaus. One reason is; men employed through such agencies are always helpless and usually ignorant. They can be beaten down to the very lowest in wages, given the most bru- tal treatment and treated in every way more like a serf or peon or slave than the man who seeks employment in person It was proved that the stock phrase of such contractors and employers, "it is Impossible to get Americans and good men to work at such labor. " Is false, as Americans and good men upon asking for work were not given work but were told to go to the padrone or labor agency and make a deal As these padronea demand a percentage of the laborer's wages each week to "hold his job," a self-respecting American and a good laborer would not take the job tinder the conditions imposed. It wa6 not the work they objected to. but the system of peonage and the scalping of wages. In a series of magazine articles recently Will Irwin exposed the crooked connection between "boss e3" or contractors and these labor agencies and padrones The fee the laborer pays to get his job and the fee- he pays each week to hold his job, is "split" between the boss and the padrone or the manager of the labor agency. That is another reason why contractors refuse to employ men independently in-dependently Both the padrone and the labor agency are the abuse of n necessity. They have been the only link between the man out of work and the empty job. They have been the clearing house, and the only one. for idle laborers. It is not strange that dealing with all classes and under un-der such circumstances that gros3 evils and abuses should arise. nn |
