HIS issue of the EMPLOYMENT SECURITY REVIEW marks on specially designed posters on business streets in every

Tthe seventh birthday of MENT SECURITY REVIEW marks community?

the little man with the basket-symbol of the Farm Placement Service. It was 7 years ago in April 1948 that he was first introduced in the REVIEW. His silhouette appeared four times in that issue, in green on the front and back cover and in black on two inside pages.

Today the well known sign is in standard use in public employment offices in the United States, on trailers and temporary farm labor information structures, and at migrant rest stops. It also appears on printed items, on signs along the Nation's highways, and in the windows of banks, stores, gas stations, feed mills, and other places of business run by more than 3,000 volunteer farm placement representatives. "Mr. FLI's" job is to identify for farmers and farm workers sources of authoritative farm labor information.

Visual identification is important when migrants are traveling along a busy highway in a truck or car. Even a farm worker who knows little English sees "Mr. FLI" and knows at a glance that here is an official part of the nationwide Farm Placement Service. Migrants recognize him at once as a dependable old friend, even when they see him far from home.

The name "FLI" is an abbreviation for "Farm Labor Information." Nearly everyone knows the symbol, but different people call it by different names. Some refer to it as "The Little Man," others as the "FLI Insignia," or "FLI Symbol." It was designed early in 1948 and was discussed at the preseason planning meetings that spring. The new device received a mixed reception; but its popularity has grown steadily.

After the first year's experience with the symbol, James H. Lumpkins, Colorado's Farm Placement Representative, wrote in the farm issue of the REVIEW about his State's experience, "The farm placement representative felt a little silly about that arm band when he first pinned it on about this time a year ago. He couldn't conceive of a Colorado farmer attaching any significance to that silhouette laborer carrying what appeared to be a basket of citrus fruit. A pitchfork or a sack of potatoes might mean something. The native Coloradoan sees a basket like that only with shipped-in bananas. But before the 1948 season was over, the interviewer and the farmer alike learned to respect that symbol.

"By this time the 'man with the grapefruit-filled banana basket' had become a popular figure on arm bands, automobiles, road signs into and out of every sizable community, and

Another early report on "Mr. FLI" was written for the REVIEW in 1950 by L. F. (Rusty) Boult, Farm Placement Representative for Oklahoma. He told how they had recruited "Mr. FLI" out of the Dallas Regional Office for the 1949 wheat harvest and before the year was over, "Mr. Wheat Harvest FLI" was a very familiar figure indeed in Oklahoma.

"Mr. FLI" has done a big job in all States during the past 7 years. Prior to 1948, the program, under the U. S. Department of Agriculture, operated on a World War II emergency basis. In 1948, the Bureau of Employment Security assumed the task of reestablishing the peacetime farm placement program within the Department of Labor. It was necessary to explain to farmers that with the end of the war emergency, there would be no government money for worker travel, subsistence, or housing, and that these and other expenses of recruiting farm workers must henceforth be borne by the employer or the worker. Programs awaited development for day-hauls, for guiding migrants, improving migrant living conditions, placing youth on farms, and increasing job opportunities for reservation Indians

and for Puerto Ricans.

A little more than 6 million farm placements were made by State agencies in 1948. Each year since then farm placements have greatly exceeded this figure. Placements have gone up in some years and down in others, due to weather, acreage allotments, quotas, and other factors. However, three times in the past 7 years more than 9 million farm placements have been made in a single season.

Placements are only one indication of 7 years of progress under the sign of the "Little Man." All States now have trained farm placement staffs and a going program. Migrants are more steadily employed. Communities can depend on a regular force of farm workers because in may places the people of the community are working hard to let outside farm workers know they are welcome. Today there are better housing, safer transportation, and new recreation and health facilities.

in response to war and postwar demands. Agricultural production must continue to rise to accommodate the sharp upward curve of our population. "Mr. FLI" is going to be a busy person the next quarter of a century helping the farmer to find good workers and the farm workers to find suitable employment and improved working conditions.

The American farmer has produced record-breaking crops

MAY 1955