IMPROVISED WORK.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LI, Issue 66, 19 August 1930, Page 4

IMPROVISED WORK.

"The remedy for unemployment cannot possibly lie in reproducing old mistakes, and experience has now repeatedly condemned the policy of creating work for the purpose of dealing with unemployment as not only mistaken in principle but profoundly disappointing 4n results," Sir Charles E. Mallet and Sir Francis Morris declared in a joint letter to the Times recently. "Before the war the Poor Law Commission in 1906-09 examined with care the history of such experiments for the previous 20 years. Its members and its investigators were unanimous in condemning them as unfortunate and unwise. Persistence in this method of relieving unemployment was found to lower the level of social life and industrial competence, wherever it was extensively practised. And no proof was ever forthcoming that these experiments converted into permanent wage-earners any substantial number of the unemployed. Since the war similar experiments have been repeated on a larger scale, and their failure has been still more unmistakable The seventh report of Lord St. David's Committee, analysing in 1928 a sum of £78,000,000 spent on loans since 1921, showed ' how lavishly money had been spent. The objects were sometimes undoubt-

edly good. The schemes provided were often intelligent. Efforts were made to antedate, wherever possible, necessary work, and to render the jobs as like real business and as un- ! like relief works as could be. But I the fact remains that all this expenditure of effort and of money has had hardly any appreciable effect in solving our unemployment problem, while it has undoubtedly diminished our available resources and has substantially increased the burdens which taxpayers and ratepayers have to bear."