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WWI
War Employment Board
McLean County, Illinois
(Transcribed by: Teri Moncelle Colglazier)

Started as a necessity at the outbreak of the war, the McLean county branch of the Illinois Free Employment Bureau, became in eighteen months a permanent and valuable public utility. Farmers for many miles in all directions from Bloom ington come to this office for their hired hands and the industrial plants of the city find use for it constantly. John E. Matthews has been responsible for the success of the office. During the war his task was to find men to send to the shipyards and cantonments, to make the idlers at home go to work and to place all men where they would produce the most during the strain of war. After the war he was busy for months finding jobs for returned soldiers and placing them at the occupations that they wanted to work in so far as it was possible. The total number of persons placed at work during the ten months of 1918 that the employment bureau was in existence was 2,436. The grand total for the first twenty- two months of the bureau is 6,610. The average number of person's placed at work in a month in the history of the bureau is 300. The average during 1919 per month was 346. The average in 1919 was twelve persons given jobs a day. There are frequent cases where men are given jobs and neither the man or his employer reported the fact to the office and the matter could not be put on record. If these cases were included the totals would be higher in every month. The government financed the office until March 22, 1919. Then until June 1 the office was kept going by the combined help of the Better Farming Association, the Association of Commerce, Trades Assembly Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association and the city. On June 1, 1919, the state took over the office. [McLean County, Illinois, in the World War, 1917-1918; by Edward E. Pierson & Jacob Louis Hasbrouck c 1921]

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