Eugen Peter Schwiedland · 1914
Schwiedland’s short review of Gargas’s 1912 study combines an indictment of Galician public employment placement with proposals for administrative reform and a qualified assessment of the book. Its central concern is the gap between public institutions’ nominal purpose and their subordination to private intermediaries. The opening locates the origins of reform in landowners’ interests rather than effective protection of rural workers:
Die schauerliche Ausbeutung der Landleute durch allerlei Vermittler konnte zur Schaffung öffentlicher Arbeitsnachweise erst führen, als große Agrarstreiks im Jahre 1902 die großen Grundbesitzer belehrt hatten, daß Vermittlungsstellen auch darüber Auskunft bieten können, wo und zu welchen Löhnen man Landarbeiter zu erhalten vermag.
English translation: The frightful exploitation of the country people by all manner of intermediaries could lead to the creation of public labour exchanges only after the great agrarian strikes of the year 1902 had taught the large landowners that placement offices can also furnish information as to where and at what wages agricultural labourers may be obtained.
The strikes made placement offices attractive as sources of information about available labour and wages. Yet the resulting provincial law of 1904 remained inadequate. Offices intended chiefly to place workers within Galicia confronted a movement towards foreign, especially overseas, destinations. Institutional coverage was also thin:
Ferner sind Aemter nur in 24 Bezirken von 80 errichtet worden, und auch dort stehen sie oft nur auf dem Papier.
English translation: Furthermore, offices have been established in only 24 districts out of 80, and even there they often exist merely on paper.
Schwiedland treats this nominal existence as more than administrative inefficiency. Offices were leased out or subjected to licensed private agencies; public subsidies could therefore sustain institutions that scarcely performed their designated function. Drawing on testimony from the emigration inquiry cited in the review, he presents the licensing of the Polish Emigration Society in 1909 as a further setback to efforts to restrain agents. The subsequent criminal investigation of that society sharpens his suspicion of humanitarian claims attached to commercial mediation.
The reform programme moves from district administration to provincial responsibility, then to coordination across Austria’s crown lands:
Vor allem müßten nun die lokalen Aemter zu Landesinstituten umgestaltet, entsprechend vermehrt und ordentlich geleitet werden.
English translation: Above all, the local offices would now have to be transformed into provincial institutes, increased in number accordingly, and properly administered.
An imperial law could subsequently facilitate the redistribution of surplus labour between crown lands. Organisational reform, however, would be insufficient without withdrawing officials’ protection from wealthy private agencies and curbing charitable associations’ secondary involvement in placement. Schwiedland thus links effective public provision to independence from the interests it should regulate.
His closing judgment distinguishes the book’s evidentiary value from its shortcomings: it omits the text of the Galician placement law and leaves some passages unclear despite expansive treatment. Nevertheless, he calls for comparable studies of Bohemia and Bukovina. The review’s wider relevance lies in this connection between regional institutional scrutiny and legislative reform: provincial legislation remains, in his concluding assessment, the practical route to progress in Austrian public employment placement.
This work was divided into 1 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 1 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian