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June 19, 1908

WARNING TO HARVEST HANDS.

State Employment Agent Says

"Avoid Advertised Localities."

"We are directing about 150 applicants where to go to get the harvest every day," said K. F. Schweiser, superintendent of the state free employment bureau, yesterday. "Since we can not transport the men out ourselves our usefulness is limited to some extent this year. We cannot tell how many are actually going to the fields. Up to date we have directed 1,017 men. We expect to handle 2,000 men between the 20th and the 25th of June. I have received more than 150 letters from groups of men in the East, particularly college students, asking about the harvest, and I directed them all to come to Kansas City about June 20.

"Right here I would like to say a word of warning against a certain class of private employment agencies. A man who runs a Union avenue agency came into my office yesterday and asked me to tell him where to send men to reach the harvest. He explained that he could make a very neat sum in fees by retailing the information to the workingmen who frequented the district where his office is located. In other words he was going to make the workingmen pay for information we dispense for nothing.

"I would like also to warn men intending to go to the fields from communities which advertise. Last year the mayor of one Kansas town came here, and by advertising induced many to go to his part of the country. He sent many more than were needed and the farmers were then able to squeeze down wages very low. If you want to go to the fields come to the state employment bureau and I will direct you to the best place, for I have the latest and best information, and it's free."

Labels: employment, farmers, Union avenue

May 9, 1908

FLOOR WALKER KISSED HER.

C. Kennedy Is Fined $50 on Com-

plaint of Miss May Irwin.

C. Kennedy, a floor walker in a 10-cent store near Eleventh and Main streets, was fined $50 in police court yesterday on a charge of disturbing the peace of Miss May Irwin, a clerk in the store. The fine was paid by the manager of the store. Miss Irwin lives in Kansas City, Kas.

A week ago, the young woman testified, she was sent to the hosiery department in the basement. It was dark down there and she turned on the lights. Miss Irwin alleged that Kennedy then appeared on the scene and grabbed her, hugging and kissing her against her protest. Last Wednesday Miss Irwin was discharged and she ascribed a reason for it. Previous to that she said she feared to make a complaint against Kennedy as she wished to hold her job. After she was discharged she filed complaint with the city attorney and Kennedy was arrested.

Kennedy admitted most of the charges the girl made, but said that she had given him cause to make advances by flirting with him. This Miss Irwin denied.

"I have worked in many stores in Kansas City," said Miss Irwin, "and in every one I have been insulted in some manner by a head man. I also could name lots of other girls who have received the same treatment. Why don't they complain? That's easily explained. They are all poor girls and have to work, and such a complaint would not only lose them one job, but might black ball them at other places."

Labels: Eleventh street, employment, Kansas City Kas, Main street, police court, retailers, women

May 8, 1908

"LOSE ME," SAYS TEMPAFSKY.

Concluded Sanitary Inspection

Wasn't the Job He Wanted.

A half day at the city pie counter sufficed for Louis Tempafsky, who was appointed Wednesday by the board of health as a sanitary inspector. Louis reported for duty bright and early yesterday morning and adorned in all the regalia of his position of authority started out on his day's work of eight hours at $2.50 per day. Some hours later the telephone in the board of health office rang.

"This is Tempafsky," the clerk who answered the 'phone heard. "Lose me off the pay roll. I never was cut out for this job. You hear me, lose me; get another man."

That was the last seen, or heard, to be more accurate, of Tempafsky, and there is a vacancy in the ranks of the sanitary inspectors.

Labels: board of health, employment, telephone

April 29, 1908

CAN YOU PREPARE FOSSILS?

If So, the Government Needs Your

Services at $75 a Month.

There is an excellent chance for somebody to get a $75 a month government job by tking a civil service examination. Notices reached here yesteday calling for a "Preparator of fossils (male)."

Nobody around the government building knows whether the fossils to be preparated are to be exclusively those of male or what the notice means. Anyhow, the examination is to be held in the federal building on May 20.

Labels: civil service, employment, federal building

April 27, 1908

ARE FEW UNEMPLOYED NOW.

Helping Hand Institute Reports Hard

Times Nearly Over.

"Our daily statistics show that the army of the unemployed is constantly growing fewer in numbers," said E. T. Brigham of the Helping Hand institute last night. "While since last November we have helped more able bodied men than we have in any other six months of our history, the number is fast getting back to normal. Spring work is opening up and men who are able to labor are having no trouble in finding something to do.

"Until the last winter, we have been handling fewer able bodied men each year, during a period covering six years. All our other classes increased, but this class constantly decreased.

"In the last six months, out of 3,000 cases, approximately a third have been men who were able and anxious to work if they could have found jobs. They were the first to be thrown out of work at the mention of the word 'panic,' and now the fact that they area ll going back to their old places, or others just as good, is almost a sure indication of the brightness of the business outlook.

"From what we can tell from here, and the Helping Hand is one of the busiest employment agencies in town, there is going to be no lack of spring work. We are getting almost as many calls for men as we can fill."

Labels: employment, Helping Hand

April 12, 1908

UNTHANK MAY GO TO BAHIA.

Negro Physician Said to Be Started

for a $4,500 Job.

Unless there is a puncture, or something happens in the next few weeks to the car of progress of T. C. Unthank, a Kansas City negro doctor, he will play in luck that thousands of white politicians would be glad to have come their way. Unthank yesterday finished an examination for the consular service. It was supposed that the proceeding was perfunctory, and that he would stand the same show and no more, than the other ninety-nine out of every 100 who try to get into the consular service.

Unthank, so it appears,is slated to go to Bahia, in the Republic of Brazil, at a salary of $4,500 a year. The job pays $500 a year more than that of registrar of the treasury, at Washington, commonly supposed to be the cream de la cream of fat jobs for the negro leaders. Brazil is one of the very few countries to which negroes may be sent.

Unthink is supposed to have passed a very good examination. He is required to be able to speak two languages. To further his claims the negro doctor called for papers in three languages, English, French and Spanish. In addition to having to be proficient in at least one foreign tongue, consular candidates must know something of the three R's.

Labels: doctors, employment, race

April 11, 1908

PENDERGAST BACK IN TOWN.

Says He Has Been on His Farm and

Has Made No Slate.

"That's a joke about me going over to Excelsior Springs to confer with other Democrats on the making up of a slate for Mayor-Elect Crittenden to follow." said Alderman James Pendergast last night. "There isn't going to be any conference at the Springs, or anywhere else. Nothing will be doing in doling out patronage until Mr. Crittenden returns from Columbia, Mo., next week. Then we will all get together, and the boys who helped to bring about the victory on Tuesday can depend upon it; they will get a square deal. I was out to the farm today, and when I got home tonight everybody was asking about the conference."

The alderman said that all stories about anybody having been selected for this or that position could be put down as sheer "bunc," and that nothing definite will be known before next week.

Labels: employment, Excelsior Springs, James Pendergast, politics

April 1, 1908

WHY HE'S OUT OF WORK.

Underpaid City Employe Gave Out an

Interview and Was Fired.

W. H. Applegate, a city employe, gave an interview to a reporter for The Journal last Sunday, in which he truthfully said that the city pays part of its Turkey creek pumping station employes only $1.75 a day. On Monday Applegate was discharged by S. Y. High, superintendent of the water department. It was said that Applegate had asked for three days off and had taken four. No other charges were made against him. Nobody denied that he had told the truth in the interview. Sometimes it's an unwise thing to tell the truth during a campaign. Anyway, Applegate told the truth and was discharged.

Applegate said yesterday that he had been singled out by certain persons for dismissal because he was working for an increase of wages for the men in the city's employ who are paid only $1.75 a day.

"A number of men in the city's employ were given a raise a short time ago," Mr. Applegate said last night. "I was requested by other men who receive only $1.75 a day to go out and work a few days for R. L. Gregory, candidate for speaker of the upper house. I spent four days at that work last week and when I returned to work I found a note notifying me of my dismissal. I went to see Mr. High and he told me that I was let out because I had stayed away from work one day more than I had asked for."

Labels: employment, Kansas City council, politics, public works, The Journal

March 28, 1908

WILL THEIR PAY BE RAISED?

Question City Employes Are Asking

Mayor Beardsley.

"If a public utilities commission will raise the salaries of private utility corporations, as is being asserted by political orators, I hope the same commission will have the power to do likewise to underpaid employes of the city," said W. H. Applegate, emoployed as a laborer at the Turkey creek water pumping station, yesterday.

"I have lived in Kansas City for forty years," he continued, "and have been employed as laborer for a number of years at Turkey creek water pumping station at $1.75 a day. This was the salary paid in 1891, and has never been raised, although the cost of living has advanced 40 per cent.

"Some months ago, with a delegation of laborers from the pumping station, we appealed to the board of public works for a slight increase in pay, but were refused. George Hoffmann, president of the board, said to us: "Boys, you have got an easy job and 365 days to work."

Labels: employment, laborer, Mayor Beardsley, public works, Utilities

February 12, 1908

NO PLACE FOR CITY EMPLOYES.

Comptroller Pearson Turns Down

Chairmanship of City Committee.

It was suggested yesterday to Gus Pearson, city comptroller, that he accept the chairmanship of the Republican city committee and supervise the details of the approaching municipal campaign.

"Were I not a city employe I would gladly accept the position, but I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe that no city employe should accept such a position," said Mr. Pearson.

"In order to have a representative and an effective organization for our next municipal campaign, I would suggest that one representative from each precinct be selected by the regular ward organization, and that the presidnt of each ward club, together with the city central committee, constitute the executive committee, with the chairman of the city central committee acting as the chairman of such executive committee, ex-officio."

Labels: employment, politics

January 23, 1908

SWINDLER BEATS

MANY LABORERS.

COLLECTS A DOLLAR FROM EACH

AS A GUARANTEE.

Promising Work at Clay Center,

Kas., at Good Wages -- Some

of Them Gave Their

Last Dollar.

After waiting in the Union station for more than three hours last night for the appearance of a new employer, more than forty laborers and masons discovered that they had been cleverly swindled out of about $40 in cash. The matter was reported to the police.

A party of Italian laborers also waited at the station last night for a new employer to take them out on a train and he, too, failed to put in an appearance.

Advertisments were placed in several saloons in the downtown districts a few days ago for fifty laborers to go to Clay Center, Kas., to work in excavating and wall building for a new telephone exchange, and also some city work. Applicants were told to apply to the Missouri saloon, 803 Delaware street yesterday. When the purported agent appeared there were at least 200 laborers in front of the saloon looking for work. Each man was required to deposit $1 to guarantee that the laborers would appear at the Union depot at 5 o'clock last night, ready to take a Rock Island train for Clay Center. They were told they would get the $1 back when they had worked a week, and also that the agent would pay their railroad fare.

About forty men went to the Union station last night as directed. The new employer did not appear and about 7 o'clock they returned to the Missouri saloon in search of him, but he could not be found. A. P. T. Wilson, Jr., proprietor of the Missouri saloon, telephoned to the sheriff at Clay Center last night and was informed that there was no work of any kind there that would require the shipment of any laborers from Kansas City, and the work described by the agent was not in process, or contemplated. The laborers had been promised 20 cents an hour and the stonemasons 45 cents an hour. All of the men who gave him the money were out of work and many of them gave their last dollar in hope of securing employment. Many of the men have families and are in poor circumstances.

Labels: con artist, employment, laborer, saloon, Union depot

January 11, 1908

CHANCE FOR A CLOCK TENDER.

Federal Building Needs One for Its

Forty-Seven Time Pieces.

An official clock winder and tender can get a good job at the federal building. Yesterday afternoon Surveyor C. W. Clarke, custodian of the building, posted a notice that the government was in need of an official clock tender. There are forty-seven clocks in the building, telling the time for the 1,100 people housed there. They run all the way from "on the dot" to "on the bum" and there is a regular streak of repair bills going to Washington.

"That is what we want to get around," said the custodian, "and for that reason we are going to employ a man to take charge of the clocks. He will have to keep them going and that means he will have to wind them and keep them in repair."

Labels: employment, federal building

December 30, 1907

STENOGRAPHERS ARE

HARD TO FIND

GOVERNMENT STANDS IN PRESSING

NEED OF THEM.

Special Examination Will Be Held

Here in January 27 -- There Are

Many Other Vacancies

Under Civil Service.

Difficulty is being encountered by the United States civil service in securing eompetent stenographers and typewriters, according to a bulletin issued by the government, through the district secretary in St. Louis. Competent persons are urgently requested to file their applications for positions with the civil service commission at Washington, D. C., immediately. A special examination will be held in many cities, including Kansas City, on January 27.

Examinations for applicants to thirty or forty other positions, chiefly in the Indian service, will also be held this month in Kansas City. Twenty grade teachers are wanted for positions in South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico and Arizona at salaries ranging from $50 a month upward. These will be held on January 22. On January 15 there will be an examination to secure men eligible to serve as physicians in the Indian service. The number wanted is not stated.

If more candidates pass the examinations than there are positions immediately vacant, the names will be kept for later vacancies in the same line of work. Full information may be obtained at the Kansas City post office.

Labels: civil service, employment, Native Americans, post office, St Louis

December 16, 1907

THEY'RE SLEEPING ON CHAIRS.

Laborers Out of Employment Pack

the Helping Hand.

"There are more people in the North End than ever before at this season," said E. T. Brigham, superintendent of the Helping Hand Institute, last night. Mr. Brigham was racking his ingenuity to find a means of crowding three men into places where there was but room for two, and that crowded. He had just converted three chairs into a temporary bed for a man fresh from the rock pile, and was pausing to explain why the place was so crowded.

"You see, it's the financial situation plus cold weather," he continued. "Most of our guests will not dare the rigors of our system, which requires a man to saw cordwood or break rocks for a bed, as long as the weather will permit sleeping outside, or there are good jobs waiting for them. The financial stringency has thrown many men out of employment. Particularly is this true of railroad laborers. And so they come to us for beds. We are so crowded we have to let many sleep upon chairs or the floor."

"Then, too, demands for men through our employment bureau have fallen off 50 per cent since last month, while demands for positions have increased 100 per cent. Singularly enough, we have men looking for jobs with checks issued by their last employers they cannot get cashed."

Labels: employment, Helping Hand, laborer, North end

June 20, 1907

BEER WAS TO EMPLOYES.

Otto Weber's License Is Restored

After a Warning.

The police board yesterday restored the saloon license of Otto Weber, who operates a beer garden at Twelfth and Oak streets. Two weeks ago Weber's license was taken away from him when policemen found him serving beer to fifteen men on Sunday.

Weber declared the men who got beer at his place on Sunday are his regular employes, and that they were working that Sunday afternoon cleaning up his dance hall on the second floor. The board advised Weber to discontinue the dance hall before restoring his beer garden and saloon license.

Labels: alcohol, dancing, employment, Oak street, police board, saloon, Twelfth street

May 7, 1907

ARREST INSTEAD OF SUICIDE.

Elevator Boy's Note Found by Land-

lady, Who Called the Police.

George Evans eloped to Leavenworth a week ago with 17-year-old Maud Calvert. He is 23 years old and an elevator operator out of work. Two days after marrying they returned to the home of the girl's sister, Mrs. Louis Baskew, 1012 Adeline place. Promised employment failed Evans and he grew despondent. Yesterday he went to where he had been rooming, at Mrs. M. N. Paine's, 315 East Fourteenth street, closed the windows tightly, preparatory to ending his life by inhaling gas. He wrote this note:

My Darling Wife: I am sorry to have to write you this, my last farewell. When you get this I will be in the other world. I am going to kill myself. It is the only thing I can do. I cannot think of leaving here, Kansas City, and leaving you, and I can't get a job. Am out of money. Nothing left for me to do only end it all, when you will be free
again and you will soon forget me and marry again and be happy. Maud, forgive me -- my dying request -- if I am doing wrong. GEORGE.

Thinking to try once more for a job Evans went down the street, but failing in search for work he returned home, determined more than ever on suicide. But the landlady had found his note. She did not know he was married. She sent to ask him to come down stairs to see her, but as eh hesitated she telephoned for an officer and he was taken to No. 4 police station. His wife and her sister were brought there later to see him.

"They called it a childish prank -- our running off and getting married," he said yesterday, "and I guess it was, but I couldn't stand it to leave Maud and I was tired trying and failing to get work."

In Captain Flahive's office the girl wife had been silently weeping. When she spoke she said:"Why, George, I'll go to work. I know one of us can have a job all the time."

Mrs. Baskew, the sister, took them both back to her home. Mrs. Paine sent to the police station to ask that Evans should not return to her home, evidently fearing he might end his life there if he did not find employment.

Labels: elevators, employment, Fourteenth street, Leavenworth, No 4 police station, police, romance, Suicide

April 25, 1907

GIANTS WOULD BE POLICE.

Three Men More Than Six Feet Tall
Are After Helmets.

Three men applied yesterday afternoon to the police commissioners to be appointed to the force, each of them measuring more than six feet in height. Virgil Dillard, recently discharged from the regular army, stood 6 feet 3 inches and Quartermaster Sergeant W. R. Lee, in charge of the Third regiment armory, measured 6 feet 1 1/2 inches. John Roy Sloan's mark was 6 feet 1 inch.

The applications were all put on file. Lee is a famous horseback rider. When in the army he was the crack rider of his regiment, one of his stunts being to ride two horses with crossed stirrups. Chief Hayes is picking out big men lately for the down town district, there being a rivalry between municipal chiefs of police of recent years in the matter of smartness on the force. It is notorious that arrests are few in the down town district, so an imposing looking man is preferred to a natural born sleuth.

Labels: employment, military, police board, Police Chief Hayes

April 13, 1907

FIREMEN TO GET MORE PAY.

Alderman Bulger Succeeds in Getting

Their Salaries Raised.

There was joy, contentment and satisfaction in the house of Bulger yesterday. The alderman, after no end of hustling, discovered that his labors in behalf of a raise of salaries for the 220 privates and 22 captains in the fire department had met with the approval of the salary revision committee. The reasoin, it was learned, for the ordinance not getting to the council last Monday night was that Comptroller Pearson was too busy with othe matters. Next Monday, the ordinance will reach the council and thereafter firemen who have been receiving $75 a month will get $80, and captains will hereafter receive $100 a month instead of $90.

Labels: Alderman Bulger, employment, Fire, Kansas City council

April 4, 1907

SCARCITY OF SERVANT GIRLS.

Women Prefer Regular Hours of the

Store and Factory.

If you have a good house servant -- or an indifferent house servant for that tatter -- you will do well to retain her in your employ at almost any sacrifice. Just now there is an almost unprecedented dearth of competent domestics in Kansas City, and housekeepers are besieging the offices of the employment agencies in their efforts to get them.

"It has passed the comic paper joke stage," declared an official at the state free employment bureau's office yesterday afternoon. "It was bad enough in the winter, but now that so many more working chances for women had opened up with the spring, it is positively appalling. The women are all going to the factories and restaurants for employment, and most of them refuse to consider any kind of housekeeping positions."

"Those who come in here say they can not afford to do domestic work when they can get other employment with regular hours. All of them complain that housekeepers overwork them, without allowing them any kind of privileges. Wages for servant girls are better now than they have ever been, but that does not seem to make any difference.

"It looks as if housekeepers were going to have to do their own work, unless the situation improves," it was stated. "I know one woman with a small family who can not keep a domestic because she entertains so much. Every woman we have furnished her with says the company makes her more extra work than she can stand, so she quits. But that's a time when servants are most needed. What we are going to do about it I'm sure I don't know."

Labels: employment, servants, women

March 26, 1907

JOBS BY CIVIL SERVICE.

Politics Overlooked in Choosing

Men for Consulships

Oh, what a shock for the old guard! W. B. C. Brown, Senator Warner's secretary, is home from Washington with the news that Clarance A. Miller, who not so very long ago was carrying a newspaper route, last week took a civil service examination in Washington for appointment to the consular service, and he stands a good chance of landing. Miller is not known to any of the city or county committeemen, nor even to the precinct captains nor the Missouri Republican Club. Another young man, also unknown to the politicians, Walter Reed by name, took the same examination and is supposed to have passed. There was a class of eleven candidates. Missouri furnished three. These were Miller, Reed, whose home is near Eighteenth and Harrison, and a man named Delchman, of St. Louis.

"It is not what it used to be," said Mr. Brown. "The old custom was for the big fellows to knock down the plums for themselves or their friends. Now the departments are being put into the civil service and thus it happens that obscure but more capable men are getting the places.

"It is as much now as a senator can do to appoint a private secretary to be paid by the government. At least it is easier to do this and no more."

According to Secretary Brown, it is a matter of doubt if Senator Warner will be in Kansas City this summer.

Labels: civil service, employment, politics, Senator Warner, St Louis