This side of the Trade Union movement is a form of insurance against bad trade. For 1903 the sum paid in respect of unemployment, as distinct from strike, lock-out and accident, and sick benefit, by the 100 principal Unions was 504,214., whilst the total so expended during the past twelve years aggregates 4,200,000l. For season trades affected by the weather this form of insurance is most valuable. In France, Belgium, and Switzerland, special grants from public funds are made to Unions of a sum almost equal to that raised by the members for out-of-work pay. One day this country may also show its appreciation of this form of thrift in like manner.

In this same connection membership in a co-operative society is helpful, as usually there is a small accumulation of capital at the credit of a member, which may be drawn upon during a time of stress. Soup-kitchens and so-called relief works have hitherto bulked largely in the methods of those who have sought to deal with the problem of poverty resulting from lack of employment, but the experience gained has not been favourable to their continuance, and they are now being generally discarded, particularly when dealing with the respectable poor. These resent bitterly being classed with loafers and wastrels, and frequently prefer starvation to relief offered at the cost of their manhood and self-respect. A much more hopeful movement in this direction is the provision of meals for school-children, particularly when the arrangements are made directly by the Education Authority, the necessary funds being provided by the charitable. Bradford Corporation carried a resolution to provide the money for the free meals for school children from the city funds, but rescinded it again at a subsequent meeting. In Bradford, Leeds, Manchester, Halifax, and other industrial centres, one or two meals each day are being provided for school-children by the Educational Authority, provision being made to supply children with free tickets where the circumstances warrant this being done. In this the school authorities are but following the example set by France and Italy, with this difference, that in those countries the money mostly comes from the corporation funds.

The Joint Committees which have been formed in London and elsewhere on the initiative of Mr. Walter Long, President of the Local Government Board, are a hopeful and helpful development of the machinery of relief. True, the opposition of the City and of some of the wealthier parts of the metropolis has prevented Mr. Long, for the present at least, from carrying out his original intention to confer upon the Committee power to levy a rate, and reduced it to dependence upon voluntary contributions for the carrying through of the schemes which it may undertake; but even with this handicap we may still hope for some good results from its workings. It will at least introduce system and order into the

methods of giving relief, and by employing men upon the land for wages weed out the deserving from the loafers. It will also discourage the overlapping of relief agencies, which has been fruitful of so much mischief in the past. Such Committees will also, it is to be hoped, give permanency to the machinery for dealing with distress arising from lack of work.

The weak spot in all this relief work is that it is dealing with distress due to unemployment, and not with the central point in the problem, which is unemployment itself. It is obvious that the proper solution of the unemployed difficulty lies in keeping men constantly employed. To deal with the unemployed, and not with unemployment, is to deal with an effect and leave the cause untouched. It cannot be too often repeated that the unemployed question does not consist of giving relief to the destitute, but of finding work for the capable. Spasmodic attempts at relief when the crisis becomes acute, and when despair is beginning to make men desperate, are but a poor substitute for that systematic and carefully thought-out effort which all who have had dealings with the unemployed difficulty know to be necessary to any adequate solution.

In a very real sense, the unemployed problem is always with us, but it is only when it becomes dangerous to the safety of the lieges, or the peace of the realm, that we notice its existence.

To deal effectively with the unemployed two reforms are necessary:

1. The creation of such new machinery as will enable the responsible authorities to act promptly in offering work, not relief, to those thrown out of employment by depression in trade;

2. To open up some new source of permanent and remunerative employment for at least one million workers who are at present overcrowding the labour market.

The first of these objects could be secured by the creation of a Department of Labour under a responsible Minister of Industry, who would be charged, inter alia, with the duty of making adequate provision for tiding the workers over a period of bad trade. This would entail the preparation, during times of prosperity, of great public works of necessity or utility, such as reclamation of foreshores and waste lands, building harbours and breakwaters, protecting threatened coasts against the encroachments of the sea, and the like. For giving proper effect to this idea a system of Labour Bureaus or Registries would be indispensable. In Germany the bureau system has reached its greatest perfection. There the Labour Registry offices, partly, by the way, under the management of the working classes themselves, are so federated and linked up by means of clearing-houses that unemployed workmen, even in remote villages, are put in touch with employers in search of workmen, almost irrespective of distance.

Lists showing the numbers of unemployed for each occupation are posted up side by side with lists of vacant situations, and the telephone is freely used for bringing together employers and workmen mutually in need of each other. The whole of Bavaria, which covers 29,000 square miles and has nearly 6,000,000 inhabitants, is grouped under one system, and in 1903 the Munich registry found situations with private employers for 51,664 applicants, being 65 per cent. of the names on the books. Those familiar with the peddling manner in which labour bureaus are worked in this country, where each one occupies a position of impotent isolation within its own borough or township, will see how much we have to learn from Germany in respect to their proper management. In the case of applicants unable to find employment, the bureau, if properly equipped, would investigate the case of each applicant for work, and when forwarding him to the nearest public undertaking in operation, would also state his qualifications, so that his services might be at once turned to profitable account.

Labour colonies, as a means of dealing with the genuine unemployed, are of very doubtful value. That they have their part to play, and a very useful part, I do not dispute; but their value lies chiefly in the fact that they deal with a class of the unemployed who require special treatment. For reclamation purposes, and also as a means of training people to work upon the land, they are in the latter case useful, in the former indispensable; but as a means of dealing with the genuinely unemployed they have not been a success. In a 'Report on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed in certain Foreign Countries' just issued by the Board of Trade, and which is in continuation of a similar report published in 1893, the compiler of the report states, as the result of the fresh investigations, that he confirms the conclusion arrived at in 1893 concerning labour colonies-viz., 'That whatever be the object of these colonies, the great bulk of material with which they deal consists not of efficient workmen out of work, but of tramps, ex-prisoners, and others whose distress is caused by personal defects. They are not colonies of unemployed so much as receptacles for social wreckage.' In Holland, it is reported, the tendency is for these colonies to breed a semi-pauper, dependent class, deficient in energy and lacking in initiative. Since there are such people in the world, it is doubtless necessary that provision should be made for them; but these do not constitute even an appreciable proportion of the unemployed, and no one wishes to multiply their numbers. In addition to the powers of preparing schemes of public works and organising an efficient system of labour bureaus, our Minister of Industry would be empowered to assist and co-operate with local authorities in carrying out local improvements at a time when they would be of most service. He might also have to deal

drastically with overtime and long hours, which between them are a fruitful cause of irregularity of work. An eight-hour working day in the carrying and transport industries would create an immediate demand for an additional 300,000 men.

Before outlining my proposals for enlarging the area of permanent and profitable employment, it will be instructive to look at the methods adopted by some of the monarchs who followed Bluff King Hal when dealing with the unemployed. This is all the more necessary since what I propose is to revert to their principles, merely adapting them to meet the requirements of these our times. It is a popular and widespread fallacy that no one is responsible for finding work for the able-bodied unemployed. The State in the past not only decreed that work should be found for the willing, and provided the necessary administrative machinery for giving effect to its decree, but actually made failure on the part of the responsible authorities a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment.

The first recorded effort which Parliament made to deal with the unemployed is contained in the Act of 43 Elizabeth, chap. 2, and dated 1601. It forms the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of the Poor Law has been subsequently erected, and leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader as to the intention of the statesmen responsible for its enactment. The helpless poor were to be relieved, and the able-bodied unemployed set to work. Clause I. set forth the manner in which this was to be accomplished. The clause is of sufficient interest at present to bear being quoted entire :

Be it enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the Churchwardens of every parish, and four, three or two substantial householders there, as shall be thought meet, having respect to the proportion and greatness of the same parish and parishes, to be nominated yearly in Easter week, or within one month after Easter, under the hand and seal of two or more Justices of the Peace in the same county, whereof one to be of the quorum, dwelling in or near the same parish or division where the same parish doth lie, shall be called overseers of the poor of the same parish; and they, or the greater part of them, shall take order from time to time, by and with the consent of two or more such Justices of Peace as is aforesaid, for setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not, by the said churchwardens and overseers, or the greater part of them, be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and also for setting to work all such persons, married or unmarried, having no means to maintain them, and use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by; and also to raise weekly or otherwise (by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal mines, or saleable underwoods in the said parish, in such competent sum and sums of money as they shall think fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other ware and stuff to set the poor on work; and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them being poor, and not able to work; and also for putting out of such children to

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be apprentices, to be gathered out of the same parish, and to do and execute all other things, as well for the disposing of the said stock, as otherwise concerning the premises, as to them shall seem convenient upon pain that every one of them absenting themselves without lawful cause as aforesaid from such monthly meeting for the purpose aforesaid, or being negligent in their office or in the execution of the orders aforesaid, being made by and with the assent of the said Justices of Peace or any two of them before mentioned, to forfeit for every such default or absence or negligence twenty shillings.

The italics are not to be looked for in the original Act. It would appear that the Act was being but indifferently administered, as in 1694 'Salisbury, a Secretary of State,' and another, issued a reminder to the Overseers, wherein, after reciting their powers under the Act, he concluded, if you be found negligent, or shall fail to meet once a month to confer together for the purpose aforesaid, then you are to forfeit 208. apiece for every month that you shall be found remiss or careless therein., And therefore see that you fail not in these premises at your peril.' Clause II. stipulates that if 'the inhabitants of any parish are not able to levy themselves sufficient sums of money for the purposes aforesaid' the said two Justices of the Peace' shall and may tax, rate and assess' any parish within the same hundred; and if the hundred was not sufficient they might extend their taxable area, by a resolution passed at Quarter Sessions, to include an entire county. The idea of making the poor rate a national charge is thus no new thing. Mayors and bailiffs of cities and -corporations and aldermen of the City of London were endowed with the same power and authority as justices of the peace for the purposes of the Act. I would not have dealt at such length with this old Statute but for the fact that it has never been repealed, is still in force, and presumably could be enforced by J.P.'s in counties and Mayors and Aldermen in cities and boroughs. The law of England makes it compulsory on the guardians and the other authorities named to provide work for the able-bodied unemployed. On that point there can be no dispute. Sir Henry Fowler, when President of the Local Government Board, replying to a question of mine in the House of Commons (September 12, 1893), said, 'Boards of Guardians have power to purchase or rent land not exceeding 50 acres for any parish, and to open workshops for setting destitute able-bodied poor to work, and to pay such persons reasonable wages for their labours.' I quote this lest anyone should say these powers have either been taken away or lost by disuse. They still exist, and can be made operative.

The next landmark on our voyage of inquiry is the Act 59 Geo. III. chap. 12 (March 31, 1819). After dealing with various matters affecting the administration of the Poor Law, Clause 12 recites the provisions of the Act of Elizabeth and proceeds:

And whereas by the laws now in force sufficient powers are not given to the Churchwardens and Overseers to keep such persons fully and constantly em