INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 14036, 17 April 1909, Page 2

INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT.

Mr Harold Spender, contributes-ati articli on unemployment insurance .in a roeem •Contemporary Eeview.L'HOkWs.’rmms ui the results ot European expeninents : The results of the Cologne ‘system seem to show that voluntary insurance against unemployment, if applied to workmen individually, even with the help of employers, will produce very feeble results; while the example of St. “Gall, in Switzerland, seems to prove that compulsion, work* ing on individual workmen is likely to b< even less successful. The examples of Ghent and Antwerp, on the other hand, provide, striking examples of comparative success achieved by the community in supporting and encouraging the collective insurance of trad* unions. But no system exists, save iu a few exceptional German workshops, which pro yides us with any guidance for the estab lisbmcm of a system of general compulsort insurance worked through employers ani with the assistance and co-operation of th< trades affected. Such a system, as we ban conceived it, would be organised by the mnni. cipalities and local councils under the supervision of the State, it would follow the model of the German accident insurance system, and would be accompanied by the formation of labor registries on the Bavarian model. It might start by a large experiment on the Ghent model, but if the workmen outside the trade unions are to be includes in its benefits it must necessarily be converted finally into' a system of universal compulsion. The contributions would b« small, and would bs levied through the employers on the stamp or book system. There is no reason why in the long result such a system should not bo almost selfsupporting. But it is clear that a considerable sura would first be required from the Slate to tide over the period which would elapse before the contributions of the working classes had built up a fund from which' grants could be paid to men out of work. If for a time any other State subsidy were needed it would probably be best devoted to the assistance of those unorganised and unskilled trades which combine the maximum of poverty with the maximum of unemployment. Perhaps it is not realty “beyond the wit of man” that the inevitable period of unemployment, which comes chronically to the British workman, should be so reorganised as to be a blessing rather than a curse. Like the winter in many parts of the northern world, it might be used as a beneficent period of rest and repair, instead of a cursed period of waste, decay, and despair. That miracle is largely a question of industrial reorganisation. At the approach of an industrial depression, which can now be foretold with the accuracy of an anti-cyclone coming across the Atlantic, great industries might arrange to spread their work out by means of “ short time,” or, where that was impossible, to give to a section of their-men, varying with each depression, a Sabbath period of unemployment for refreshing their energies, and perhaps refilling their minds, so that they should come back to work with new ptwer and force. Such a future conM only be realised by a scheme of insurance.