United States Conciliation Service
Department of Labor agency (1913–1947)
The United States Conciliation Service was an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor that existed from 1913 until 1947 whose role was to bring labor disputes to a settlement through mediation.
History
The origins of the service lay in the act that created the Department of Labor in 1913, which act stated that the department would have the power to step in to act as a mediator in labor disputes whenever "the interests of industrial peace may require it to be done." Getting the service going was a focus of the first Secretary of Labor, William B. Wilson. The service was initially slow to build up because little money was budgeted for it, but by 1917, it had a directorship position and was clearly functioning as its own unit with the department. That first director of the service was Hugh L. Kerwin (who would remain in the position until 1937). Following the US entry into World War I, cases that the Conciliation Service could not or did not resolve were sent to the National War Labor Board.
Mediation cases were handled by people appointed as Commissioners of Conciliation, who vowed to act impartially. The conciliation process could be brought into play for both strike actions and lockouts and for any other type of industrial and labor relations matter. Participation in mediation was voluntary. Arbitration was also offered to those parties willing to agree to it. The service did not possess legal force of action, but instead relied upon both parties being interested in reaching agreement and, as a fallback, parties not wanting to appear uncooperative in the eyes of public opinion.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “United States Conciliation Service” is department of Labor agency (1913–1947). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and Conciliation, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q123000108. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1947, 1917 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Conciliation Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.