Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1919 — Work Should Not Be Undertaken Solely in Order to Provide the Work [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Work Should Not Be Undertaken Solely in Order to Provide the Work

By WILLIAM B. WILSON,

Secretary of Labor

We are short in our normal supply of labor somewhere between three million and five million workers; so if we could engage in our prewar activities on a post- | war basis immediately there would be a shortage of the supply of labor. But we are not in a position to do that. How are we going to provide employment; how B are we going to create a reservoir that will take up the [ surplus labor during the period of demobilization and j keep it busily employed ? And there is great necessity for our people being busily employed during that

period, which will be one of the most critical in the history of our nation. = Now during the past two or three years our public improvements have lagged. Our federal government has not engaged in the usual public improvements; neither have the state governments nor the municipalities. There were two reasons for that; the shortage of workmen and the inability to properly finance, because of the' control that the federal government had to have 'over finances in order to make sure that its own financial situation would be secure. Both of those conditions have changed, and there is now a surplus of labor, and the federal government has released control of the finances so that credits are now available. To me the one great method of forming a reservoir for buffer employment is to have the federal government engage in its normal implement activities, and to have every state and municipal government do likewise. 1 would not ask that work be undertaken solely for the purpose of providing work. To place men at work on any job, where the results from it are not needed, is just so much waste of time and energy and man power. But there is a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of improvement that is needed; and so that the minds of our workers will not be fertile fields for the propagation of false philosophy it is our duty to see to it that these activities are now engaged in to the fullest extent.