Jamaica Plain Assists Unemployed

Boston Daily Globe January 9, 1915


Jamaica Plain To Assist Unemployed

Bureau Supplies Men to Clean Up Properties.

Campaign to Begin This Afternoon - Loan Association Also Helps.


Jamaica Plain will witness this afternoon a campaign to arouse the district into a realization of the extent of unemployment problem. Recent investigations showed that one wage earner in five was without work, the result of which was the establishment of the Jamaica Plain Free Employment Bureau.

This office has done considerable in meeting the situation, but the needs are still so pressing that a squad of unemployed will placard store windows today with appeals for relief, and "fliers" will be distributed.

The bureau is asking residents to have the inside or outside of their properties done now, and employ men furnished by the local office. A fund has been started for cleaning up property not under the jurisdiction of the city, such as private ways and vacant lots, and contributions as solicited.

Monday morning 15 picked men registered at the bureau will start from the city barn at Child st at 7:30 o'clock and, accompanied by a two-horse wagon, will visit a number of places in the district and show their efficiency in this work. The cart will bear a placard reading: "Clean Up Jamaica Plain Now. Help the Labor Exchange by Employing Jamaica Plain Men."

The squad of men will work seven hours a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and will receive 25 cents an hour. It was at first proposed to include city streets in the clean-up work, but it was later deemed inadvisable, due to opposition by city employees and others. The city machinery will, however, be used.

Five out of a total of 10 applications for loans were approved by the Unemployment Loan Association of Jamaica Plain last evening, and heads of these families will receive an amount equivalent to three-fourths of the usual earning capacity, to extend over a period of one month. These families have altogether 11 children, ranging from 3 weeks to 10 years.

This fund has nearly reached $1000,the principal contributors being a Boston woman with $200, and a school teacher of the neighborhood who has loaned the $500 she expected to save during the year, both of them wishing to remain anonymous. The Tuesday Club women have voted to dispense with the guest night this year and give the $200 usually spent to the fund.

The committee for the relief of the unemployed consists of Theodore Barnes, chairman; D.T. Hiltz, vice chairman; Miss Emily Balch, Miss Ella B. Westcott, K.R. Bloomquist, John McClintock, Allen Grieve and Robert Fowler, treasurer. Miss Ellenora Adams, a graduate of the School of Social Science, has ben appointed to investigate the applications for loans.