The Depression Papers of Herbert Hoover

Press statement, March 12, 1931

Statement by the President:

In cooperation with Secretary Doak, I have appointed Mr. John R. Alpine of New York as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Labor in charge of the United States Employment Service activities to include the application at once of the emergency appropriation of $500,000 made, at my suggestion, at the end of the last session of Congress over and above the usual $380,000 per annum.

Mr. Alpine comes to the Service with a long, successful record in the organized labor movement and large experience in employment management. He was International President of the United States Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters; Vice President of the American Federation of Labor; was Acting President of the Federation in 1918 during the absence of President Gompers in Europe. Since 1921 he has been an official of the Ginnell Company with special relationship to employment questions. He served on the United States Cantonment Construction Adjustment Commission during the late war, and was a delegate in the Labor Section of the Paris Peace Conference in 1918. He has had long experience in employment problems and will take up his new duties at once.

It is proposed by Secretary Doak and Mr. Alpine to add at once several divisons to the Federal Employment Service. These divisions will cover mining, building, metal traides, transportation, needle trades, textiles, office and mercantile, seamen, and longshoremen.

In addition to the extension of the Federal Employment Service in these directions, which are interstate in character, and which will be set up in cooperation with the existing public agencies, it is proposed that an extensive study of the whole question of free public employment agencies shall be made both in the United States and abroad. Special examination will be made of the system needed for placement to meet the so called technological unemployment—the whole with view to devising a sound basis for the extension of employment services.