|
|
All this registering and interviewing
has taken place at the 1,225 local offices of the Ministry, which range
from first-class Employment Exchanges to small Branch Offices.
 The
day had arrived when these Employment Exchanges, which once had only
been haunted by shabby groups of the unemployed, were really exchanging
employment, were the lively local centres of our National Service
organisation, and so at least had come into their own. Of many of these
offices it can be said that their appearance – too often shabby and
depressing – is the worst thing about them.
Representing as they do the cause of
National Service, they ought to look the most attractive, and not the
least attractive, premises in the street. When all that these offices
have done during the last three years is remembered, it might be
imagined that the Ministry must have had to quadruple its staff, but
actually it has not even doubled.
Before the war it employed 5,400
persons at Headquarters, and 26,200 in all the Regional and Local
Offices, making a total of 31,600. Now there are just under 5,300 at the
Headquarters, and about 35,000 outside, including people working in the
Regional Offices, District Manpower and Appointments Offices, and the
Large Training Department, making a total of about 40,300.
[Link
here to the National index of hostel sites]
There can hardly be any activity in
our national life that some members of this 40,000 odd have not touched
during the course of the long day’s work. Here is a little army that
has helped to produce great armies, both of fighting men proper and of
industrial war workers.
NEXT
SECTION |
|
|