The first employment bureau in England was opened at Egham, near London, in 1885, but when the Local Government Act of 1894 went into effect this was discontinued. From 1:•:5 to 1906 a voluntary bureau was in operation at Ipswich but in the latter year the Distress Com mittee took over its work and within a short time numerous municipal and private bureaus were taken over by the Distress Committees under the local governments. In 1909 an act became law making the establishment of em ployment bureaus or labor exchanges compul sory throughout the United Kingdom, and there are now more than 425 such exchanges with about 1,100 local agencies, all under the control of a central office at London and eight divisional offices in various cities. This federated system of labor exchanges is chiefly for unskilled labor but it works in conjunction with the trade union bureaus for skilled labor and has been very successful.
Germany's first municipal bureau grew out of a private bureau established at Freiburg in 1892, and the movement has been taken up enthusiastically by almost every city of im portance. Ordinary commercial bureaus in Germany concern themselves chiefly with se curing positions for domestic servants. The trade unions have their own bureaus. The Berlin public employment bureau is under the charge of various united societies but it Is granted a subsidy by the city government and is also strictly supervised. A nominal fee is charged to workmen who register but it is free to all employees. The management is equally divided between employers and employees and prominent citizens are in charge of the im portant committees. The best system is that of Munich. The Bavarian communes are held legally responsible for the conduct of the em ployment bureaus; the separate municipal bu reaus are federated into a complete system with central bureaus in the largest Bavarian cities.
No charge is made for services, the municipality defraying the entire cost with the aid of appro priations by the Bavarian government. In almost every German city of 50,000 or more inhabitants a municipal bureau will be found, and such bureaus are particularly successful in southern Germany, but in the northern part of the country the work of the municipal bureau is performed, to a great extent, by voluntary associations, aided by the municipalities. See LABOR LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES.
Bibliography.— Barnes, C. B., 'Public Bu reaus of Employment' Sin 'Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sci ence,' Vol. LIX, pp. 185-193, Philadelphia 1915) •, Beveridge, W. H. 'Unemployment' (London 1912) ; Devine, E. T., 'Reports on the Desirability of an Employment Bureau in the City of New York> (New York 1909) ; Green wood, Arthur, 'Juvenile Labour Exchanges> (London 1911) ; Hodges, H. G., 'Statutory Provisions for the Achievements of Public Em ployment Bureaus' (in 'Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,' Vol. LIX, pp. 165-184, Philadelphia 1915) • Kellor, F. A., 'Out of Work' (New York 1904) ; Leiserson, W. M., 'The Movement for Public Labor Exchanges' (in Journal of Political Economy. Vol XXIII, pp. 707-716, Chicago 1915) ; Nash, M., 'Municipal Employment Bu reaus in the United States' (in National Municipal Review, Vol. IV, pp. 429-436, Con cord, N. H., 1915) ; Persons, Parsons, Moses, et al., 'Labor Laws and Their Enforcement" (New York 1911) • Willoughby, W. F., 'Employment Bureaus in the United States' (Boston 1900).