RIGHT TO WORK BILL. PROBLEMS OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1909, Page 5

RIGHT TO WORK BILL. PROBLEMS OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

EEMEDY OF THE LABOUR PARTY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 7th May. The Labour party's Right to Work Bill was rejected by -the House of Commons a few nights ago by 228 to 113 votes. The second reading was moved by Mr. J. Ilodge (Labour M.P., Gorton). The official tiUe was the Unemployed Workmen Bill. It. proposed that county and borough councils should become local unemployment authorities, to register local unemployed persons in their districts, and provide work for them, or maintenance for them and their dependents. A Central Unemployment Committee would be set up for the pur pose of framing schemes for the provision of work, establishing and maintain ing training farms, forest schools, and reformatory colonies for those convicted of habitual disinclination to work. Provision was made for the compulsory purchase qi land for the purposes of the Bill. Poor-law relief was to be no disqualification for voting at any election. APPROVED BY TRADE UNIONISTS. • Mr. Hodge said the Bill had the> approval of the whole of the organised trade unionists in the country, and ho complained that tho Government hod not give*h effect to its own views with regard to the urgency of the question of unemployment. The burden of unemployment, ho said, would continuously increase, and the problem become more acute, because of the syndicntion and organisation of industries. If capital was going to be so unconscious with j reference to workmen as the present I state of affairs demonstrated, it was time that the House did something to remedy such a condition of things. He asked Mr. Burns whether the Government was prepared to withdraw its Whips and leave the issue raised by the Bill to the unfettered decision of the House, and he appealed to the Government to allow the Bill to go to a committee. The whole of the details might be altered, but so long as the principle was left intact the Labour party would be satisfied. \ln seconding tho motion, Sir. J. Ward said that among the skilled workmen of the country there were about 250,000 regularly out of work, and, assuming that the proportion was no higher in the unskilled trades^ he calculated that there must be continuously unemployed in this country at least 750,000 workers. That was why they considered the problem of unemployment as the most important" problem of the day. The hon. member caused some amusement by inadvertently saying, "When I came to work to-day," which ha corrected by "When I came to the House to-day." THE RIGHT TO FLY. Mr Maddison, in moving the rejection of the Bill, said men might just as wel 1 derrnnd the right to fly as tho right to work. What was wanted was opportunity and ability — not right. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald hoped the House would approve the general principle of the Bill, and agree to send it to a committee, when the details could be considered. He admitted that tho whole question was an open one, and fcHafc tVe Bill was only produced for the purposes of thought and discussion. GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE. Mr. Burns said that last year the House decided by a majority of 149 that a similar measure could not be accepted, because of its inherent difficulties, political drawbacks, and serions economic errors, and because it struck at the roots of industrial life in this country, and seriously affected political, trade union, and friendly society organisations. Both the majority and minority of the Poor Law Commission condemned the establishment of relief works, which the Bill would set up, and the public maintenance it proposed. Tho House was asked to assent to a crude chimera of immature Socialism, in spite of the condemnation of the Poor Law Commission. The machinery provided would lower the standard of output and corrupt the character of the individual. In view of the universal ! failure of (his type of machinery and work, the Government asked the House j not to support the Bill. It hoped <.hat Labour exchanges and trado boards in conjunction vith administrative nets and the establishment of some system of insurance against unemployment, would deal with the problem in a better «vny than the Bill suggested. If passed into law, it would prevent the Government from doiiig many things in which lit was no\* engaged, and many it intended to do, for properly and harmoniously adjusting a total scheme of social reform and industrial amelioration. What the Government had done in the last three and a half years was an earnest of what it intended to do in the near future.