A few of the private agencies are fairly well equipped; that is, they have desks, counters, telephone, chairs or benches, and a waiting-room which in cold weather is kept warm for the patrons. Others, the majority, have very little equipment, perhaps a chair and a table in a single, bare room. They keep no books other than what they carry in their pockets. For the average small labor agent an office is only used as a place to hang the license. He gets his patrons by standing on the street and soliciting. The other private agents are playing the rôle of man catcher, and he must do the same if he would succeed. There are two types of private labor agencies--the commission agencies, and the boarding or commissary agencies. The commission agency is the pioneer job-selling institution which survives by charging a fee to the employer who seeks workers, or by charging a fee to the applicants, or by charging both. Usually they charge both the applicant and the employer, and formerly their prices were governed by the demand for jobs, on the one hand, and for workers, on the other. (If the competition is for workers they can raise the price charged the employer. If jobs are scarce they can raise the price charged the applicant.) The boarding and commissary agency charge no fee for the job. Their profit is made in keeping the boarding-house for the men they hire. In the past it was proverbial that better shipments could be had from the private agencies in Chicago than from any other city. A few years ago the Chicago agencies were shipping men to all the big jobs within a radius of from 500 to 1,000 miles, and men would come to Chicago from 500 to 1,000 miles in one direction to be sent by the agencies to work on some job equally as far in another direction. These long-distance interstate shipments have been the chief factor in the prosperity of the private agencies. High prices were charged for the long shipments but the men were willing to pay them whether the job was good or not in order to secure free transportation west or south or east. The long shipments are not so numerous at present and the high fees are no longer permitted. The charge sometimes made that the private agencies are gruff and discourteous would seem well founded if one failed to consider the behavior of homeless men on the street. These men would not pass the same judgment. They are used to speaking roughly to each other. They take and give hard blows in their dealings with the “labor shark.” Many men can get along much better with the blunt and unceremonious private agent than with the sleek, precise, courteous, and business-like officials in the public agencies. Their preference for the private agent is not for his gruffness or the ease with which they may approach him. It is mainly because he serves them better. They hate him for his fees but he gets the jobs they want.