THE IMPROVEMENT OF CONDITIONS AMONG IMMIGRANTS INTO CALIFORNIA 69 



port which contained the following among other detailed recommenda- 

 tions : 



i) The creation of a State bureau of labour exchanges under a repre- 

 sentative board or commission and having branch offices in the centres of 

 population to act as a clearing-house for labour. The bureau should co- 

 operate with the Railway Commission to provide low fares for the labourers 

 it places, and should have authority to regulate private and philanthropic 

 agencies of employment, issuing and revoking licenses to them at pleasure. 



2) The -enactment of more stringent laws for the regulation of private 

 employment agencies. 



3) The appointment of a special committee or some existing commis- 

 sion to conduct an extended investigation into the wisdom of devising a 

 scheme for insurance against unemployment, possible schemes for regula- 

 rizing and dovetailing private enterprise, and ways and means of underta- 

 king public works during periods of depression. 



4) The organization of rural credit on European lines. 



5) A State land bureau which would preferably- co-operate with the 

 University of California. 



Some of these recommendations have already been followed, notably 

 numbers 2, 3 and 4 ; and as regards number 4, wliich was also a recommenda- 

 tion of the Commission on I^and Colonization whose report we treated in 

 our article already cited, the Commission of Immigration has, as we have 

 seen, succeeded in forming within itself a special organization which 

 constitutes a great improvement on the previous state of affairs. 



As regards the problems of agricultural labour they are no more than 

 an aspect of the general agrarian problem in Cahfornia. Speculation in 

 land has had deplorable consequences. On this subject Colonel Harris 

 Weinstock expressed himself as follows, in an address delivered on 11 No- 

 vember 1 914 to the California State Fruit Growers' Convention : " Great 

 fortunes have been expended throughout the nation and elsewhere, in- 

 viting people to engage in California horticulture and agriculture, but our 

 methods have been so crude and so unscientific and the love of greed on the 

 part of land promoters has been such that a very great proportion of those 

 who ha ve been induced to come here and to buy our acreage have failed, 

 with great misfortune to themselves and with serious injury to the vState. 

 A frightfully large proportion of such investors have come to grief, have 

 been forced back to the cities, many of them as unskilled labourers, to swell 

 the ranks of the casual unemployed...." The Commission would look with 

 favour on legislation which would break uj) large holdings of unimproved 

 lands and open them up to development and colonization. 



In the matter of unemployment the Commission, at the governor's 

 request, laid down for the towns and counties of the State a uniform plan 

 of action, according to which the unemployed executed works of public 

 utility in return for board and lodging. It was an interesting attempt to 

 replace unproductive charity by useful work. In the winter of 1914-1915 

 more than 100,000 persons profited directly or undirectly by this organiza- 

 tion. 



