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Statement on the Appointment of John R. Alpine to the United States Employment Service.
March 13, 1931

IN COOPERATION with Secretary Doak, I have appointed Mr. John R. Alpine of New York as Special Assistant 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 ¹ made, at my suggestion, at the end of the last session of Congress over and above the usual $380,000 per annum.

¹ Second Deficiency Act (Public, No. 869, 46 Stat. 1552).

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 duringthe absence of President Gompers in Europe. Since 1921, he has been an official of the Grinnell 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 divisions to the Federal Employment Service. These divisions will cover mining, building, metal trades, 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.