The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK.—I have just heard of an organization which is not new in concept nor in organization but which has expanded its activities in recent years dealing with important services. This organization is called Labor Pool, Inc., and has its headquarters in Chicago.

It started in 1946 in a very small way, but in 1958 the company had nine offices in five cities and has become one of the five most important suppliers of temporary labor in the country. The aim is to provide temporary workers for any job where people are needed on a part-time basis.

For instance, if a business office or a factory has to meet an unexpected emergency for which its regular staff is insufficient, Labor Pool will solve the situation by furnishing experienced and reliable workers on a daily basis.

Labor Pool bears the cost of insurance and bonding for all the people it sends out, so while the employer pays on a daily basis he is saved the costs of a delay in production if he cannot get extra workers to meet a special situation. He is saved the expense of keeping extra workers on a payroll to meet a special situation. He is saved the costs of keeping extra office records and of processing new men.

If he is short of people, for example, to unload freight cars, the use of an extra crew for unloading could save a large amount on demurrage. He is not concerned with increases in compensation or unemployment insurance rates, and he is saved costly overtime because he will pay less to extras who come in by the hour or by the day.

Altogether this seems to be a real service, and it is a business about which I had never heard before. Yet, it is not really new to our country, for in the early days there were what were known as traveling journeymen—skilled laborers who went from place to place offering their services for special needs.

Of course, the farm laborer who moves from place to place with the seasons and the harvesting of crops is nothing more than an itinerant laborer, and Labor Pool simply has taken over this old idea of the traveling laborer and made it into a business which fills practically any type of need that may come up.

One afternoon last week I was visited by a rather impressive gentleman, a Mr. Lloyd L. Sweet, who represents the New England headquarters at Durham Center, Conn., of an organization called World Harvest Evangelism, Inc.

This group is made up of a dedicated people who want to preach the gospel of Christ to the world as a whole, and they belong to no particular denomination. They can work with all who call themselves Christians and they want to bring about a greater and greater belief in Christianity, because they think that only this belief will eventually bring us a peaceful world and make of us a happy and contented people.

There is no doubt in my mind, after talking with Mr. Sweet, that he fully believes their crusade is a crusade to induce people to live a Christian life, an ideal that has existed for centuries. The realization has never yet been achieved, but one cannot help admiring those who work for it so very hard.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1959, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 1, 1959

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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