The
history of these bureaus demonstrates the tendency we all have to
consider a legal enactment in itself an achievement and to grow
careless in regard to its administration and actual results; for
an investigation into the situation ten years later discovered
that immigrants were still shamefully imposed upon. A group of
Bulgarians were found who had been sent to work in Arkansas where
their services were not needed; they walked back to Chicago only
to secure their next job in Oklahoma and to pay another railroad
fare as well as another commission to the agency. Not only was
there no method by which the men not needed in Arkansas could
know that there was work in Oklahoma unless they came back to
Chicago to find it out, but there was no certainty that they
might not be obliged to walk back from Oklahoma because the
Chicago agency had already sent out too many men.
This investigation of the employment bureau resources of Chicago
was undertaken by the League for the Protection of Immigrants,
with whom it is possible for Hull-House to cooperate whenever an
investigation of the immigrant colonies in our immediate
neighborhood seems necessary, as was recently done in regard to
the Greek colonies of Chicago. The superintendent of this
League, Miss Grace Abbott, is a resident of Hull-House and all of
our later attempts to secure justice and opportunity for
immigrants are much more effective through the League, and when
we speak before a congressional committee in Washington
concerning the needs of Chicago immigrants, we represent the
League as well as our own neighbors.
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