ITo THE EDITOR Or THE " Spicrrros.") should dike to
endorse, in a general way, the opinions of your correspondent, Mr..Leslie Hore-Belisha. as to the use- lessness and waste of the so-called Employment Exchanges. I know Selby very -well, whose Exchange your earlier corre- spondent, Mr. Mark .Scott, is so perfectly satisfied with, but this is a very small place, and even if Mr. Scott's eulogies of the work carried ea there are ,reliable, such a place can hardly
be taken as a sample of the value of these institutions as a whole. A primary object of the Exchanges, according to Mr. Scott, is to save the time of employers and workers. My experience, which includes both a very large Exchange in a County Borough and a smaller Exchange in a place about the size of Selby, and not unlike Selby in this respect that the latter probably has a certain amount of work put through its hands by Government Departments, is that the Exchanges waste the time and money of both classes. Hitherto, workmen used to come direct to any employer's premises where work was likely to be available, and the news that workmen are required in any, trade or at any works in a district rapidly spreads amongst the workers without any necessity for the intervention of the Labour Exchange officials at all. What a shocking sight it is to see scores of men standing outside a Labour Exchange smoking their pipes, &c., day after day, " because no man hath hired them," whereas if they went about looking for jobs they would often be taken on casually, and perhaps ultimately more than casually, because the employers would find out of what stuff some of them were made. Then, the employers have also to help to keep the Exchange books for them by being requested to fill in any number of forms with information which the Exchanges apply to them for.
I do not know of a more outrageous instance of the way in • which one Government Department is instructed to bolster up another than the following fact, which was recently told me by a Government official who has had a responsible position in the district in which my business has been situated for many years past. This gentleman has the carrying out of Government work in a considerable area, some of which is in rather out-of- the-way places, and has repeatedly to engage local labour to supplement his own regular staff. During his long tenure of this office he has, of course, got to know suitable men to help with his work in various districts and just where to find them, but for the last year or two he has had instructions not to engage any man whatever until the individual has first been sent to register at the nearest Employment Exchange, and with one ease in particular, which he mentioned to me, the said Exchange was twelve miles off, and he had to pay the expenses of the man going to and fro, and the time which he lost in so doing, before he could start him on the job. Such abominable waste of time and money, simply to augment Government returns, is disgusting to a degree in these days, when any man with a spark of patriotism within him is doing his utmost to get the country out of its present distressful condition. I have not Mr. Scott's last letter by me and so can only refer to this one point. I give my copy of the Spectator every week-end to a very able Christian minister, and this friend was recently pleased to remark, when I thought of giving up your paper for a few weeks as I was going away, that he hoped I should not do so as it was the only newspaper that kept him sane.—I am,
Sir, &c., " EMPLOYEE " OF FORTY YEARS. [We cannot continue this correspondence."—The Spectator.]
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