Valley Girl Views: The Williamsport Plan - The Williamsport Retraining School

THE WILLIAMSPORT PLAN

From: Picture of Lycoming County, Vol. 2 by Greater Williamsport Community Arts Council, 1978

"Like other cities in 1930, Williamsport found itself in the midst of the Depression and facing rising unemployment. To add to its difficulties, the U. S. Rubber Company closed its plant in Williamsport in 1932, putting an additional 2,500 people out of work, swelling the already overburdened relief rolls and leaving most of the workers without marketable skills. Faced with rising relief bills, businessmen worked through the Chamber of Commerce to collect data to determine what type of worker was unemployed. The results showed that 75 percent of the unemployed were unskilled, 85 percent of whom had adequate backgrounds to become skilled or semi- skilled workers. A shop-to-shop survey made the surprising disclosure that while unemployment was rising, many shops reported an increasing shortage of workers with particular skills. Dr. George H. Parkes, director of the vocational department of the Williamsport High School, was appointed to design a program that would equip the unemployed with needed skills.

Read more about the Rubber Works here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2023/05/from-rubber-works-to-pajama-factory.html

A plan, which became known as the Williamsport Plan, was designed to screen, train, and place the unemployed through the coordinated efforts of the Williamsport Retraining School — also directed by Dr. Parkes — the state employment office, the YWCA, the YMCA, and numerous other agencies. The Williamsport Retraining School was to serve also as a training center for the WPA, PWA, NYA and CCC.

In the Williamsport High School at the corner of Third and Susquehanna Streets, the staff of the Williamsport Retraining School set up an electrical shop in a coal bin, re- claimed a locker room for the automotive department, and set up a machine shop under the new school bleachers. With only a $1000 grant from the Williamsport School District, the Williamsport Retraining School could afford little in the way of manpower. About $10,000 in equipment was salvaged from area junk yards and reconditioned. Another $10,000 worth of equipment was borrowed from area industries.

By 1933 Parkes decided a separate building for the Williamsport Retraining School was needed. The Williamsport School District could offer no funds and did not agree that a separate building was necessary. So the staff of the Williamsport Retraining School chose a site on school property, designed a blueprint of the building, and tapped the County Relief Board for a work force. Every day a different crew of twenty workers was sent to the school with materials bought on credit and borrowed tools, the crew dug out a foundation and constructed a one-story, saw-tooth building with walls of glass to admit a maximum of natural light. By 1934 the three-unit building at the corner of West Third and Park Streets was ready for use.

"When surveys projected a need for truck drivers, the staff of the school borrowed trucks, dug a regulation-sized mechanics pit in the yard of the school and started one of the first trucking schools in the country. When there was a shortage of men skilled in the use of the acetylene torch, the staff rounded up several second-hand and dis- carded torches and borrowed a skilled worker as an instructor.

The single objective of the Williamsport Plan was to place the unemployed in jobs for which they were trained. Toward that end, eight industry-experienced coordinators were employed by the Williamsport Retraining School to determine what skills local industries would be needing in the near future and what student was best suited for training in that area. Follow-up training was offered until the employee was settled in his job.

Most employers were unable to predict their future needs, but interviews with shop foremen and supervisors uncovered specifically needed skills. Applicants to the program were interviewed to determine their aptitude as well as their interest. Unless an applicant showed no aptitude for a skill needed by industry, he received this skill with the near certainty of placement. The strength of the program rested in the ability of Parkes and his staff to determine the applicant ' s ability and to equip him with a marketable skill. Coordinators kept close contact with area employers to be certain applicants would be trained in skills that would be needed.

Between 1930 and 1940, about 4,000 unemployed workers were placed, each at a cost of only $100. More than half of them had been on Williamsport relief rolls. The program was so successful that in 1940, 3,100 people were enrolled, 600 of whom were placed in that year. Lycoming County had been the first county in the state to initiate a program to pay relief recipients as they trained for employment. The staff of the Williamsport Retraining School was far superior to any in the country in its job placement record and its ability to predict the job market. Educators, state and federal groups, and businessmen visited the Williamsport Retraining School, a predecessor to the Williamsport Technical Institute and the Williamsport Area Community College, to study its organization. The Williamsport Plan was ap- plauded by the federal government, by numerous newspapers, and in 1940 by Nation ' s Business , Woman ' s Day, and The Saturday Evening Post. "

NOTE - an earlier "Williamsport Plan" was popular as early as 1910. That plan was a "method by which citizens co-operate in guaranteeing loaned made to new industries or to existing industries desiring to expand but lacking the capital. Citizens do not furnish the actual cash. They lend their credit and no cash is required unless a guaranteed industry runs behind or fails"

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Dr. George H. Parkes

1895-1983

Director of Williamsport Technical Institute 1924-1951

Dr. George H. Parkes, director of the Williamsport Technical Institute, will consult the Inter-American Educational Foundation in Panama to build a vocational school to train young men and women for work in the Canal Zone. This was published in the November 19, 1944,