Nothing would do more for efficiency in the employment office business than to compel the private agencies to keep as efficient records as the public bureau. The spirit of competition so prevalent in the private agencies is not present in the public labor bureau. The public agency stands complacently on the side, never entering the struggle to get jobs and men together. It is too much of an office and too little of an agency. The public and private agencies operate upon diametrically opposing assumptions. The assumption of the public agency is that the man once placed will remain so long as the job lasts, and a large proportion of their jobs, especially in the Dearborn Street office, are for “long stake” men. A man’s record, his qualifications, are taken and he is sent out to the job with the notion that he will work steady. The private agencies, on the contrary, assume that few of these men will remain long on the job; that they may stay ten days or two weeks and seldom longer than three months. The public agency with an eye to permanency may be expected to move slowly in placing men on jobs, whereas the private agency will send anyone to any job that he says he can do and that he is willing to pay for. THE CASUALIZATION OF LABOR The casualization of labor, in spite of its concern to place men permanently, has a tendency to attract “home guards,” i.e., men who do not care to leave the city and yet do not want steady work. They may work from a day to a week, then they return for another job. The following are a few of the names taken at random from a list of men who had been given ten or more jobs by the Federal and State Labor Exchange between March 1, 1922, and August 15, 1922 (five and one-half months): Number Jobs Wm. Mitchell 1,735 20 Jas. Perry 5,878 10 Tony Felk 1,195 10 Jas. Griffin 5,811 12 F. Mullen 5,069 21 Ed. Moorhead 635 20 Fred Wagoner 5,334 15 Jas. Purl 682 16 F. A. Murlin 5,390 13 W. Galvin 628 18 A. Myers 3,700 17 W. Slavis 2,202 19 P. Myshowi 2,408 15 C. Carroll 4,742 16 Jas. Lewis 3,872 16 The records show hundreds of similar instances. Some men have been sent to as many as forty or fifty jobs during a period of six months and few stayed with a job more than a month or two. John M. secured 26 jobs from the Free Employment Bureau in less than three months between May 4 and July 26. The following is the list of employers with the dates of employment:[38]