The Unemployed Problem

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 206, 9 October 1888, Page 3

The Unemployed Problem

The London Times has the following article— The" First Beport of the Mansion House Conference on the Condition of the Unemployed "is sad reading. The conference, it may be remembered, was the outcome of the “ unemployed” demonstrations of last November, and from the beginning it had two separate ends in view. Through the agency of Lord Meath’s Public Gardens Association, the committee disbursed some £3OOO in wages to some three or four hundred men. They sought to attempt to benefit permanently all those labourers who are capable of being so helped, but after most careful and apparently zealous enquiry they were able to improve the condition of only 17 per cent, of those employed, and they’ express a doubt whether that improvement is likely to be permanent. To judge to the full extent of that failure, it has to be remembered that no man was employed at all unless he was supposed to bo able-bodied and of good character, and that the Reference Committee had funds at their disposal for emigration or any other purpose they thought proper. But the truth appears to be that the men to be helped were idle, or, at least, had lost the capacity of continuous exertion, and that they had no desires save to supply the wants of the day, no views as to their future, no wish to emigrate, and in some cases a positive objection to take work out of London. In short, the Reference Committee appointed to give a helping hand to the labourers found that these were, in most cases, incapable of rising. Thui they report " that works started for the relief of the unemployed, even though they be in some degree useful and beneficial, are in the long run an injury instead of a benefit to the community by . . . diminishing self reliance and enterprise; also that such works . . . will usually result in increasing the number of these dependent on almsgiving, and by slackening foresight during the months when wages are earned, intensify the evil instead of remedying it. It 'is not possible to pen a stronger condemnation than that, which, it must be noted, is not the work of an unfriendly critic, but of a coinmitteeof the Conference itself. In these circumstances it is a remarkable proof of the optimism of human nature that the Conference contemplated the possibility of making a future appeal for large sums of money to be used in purchasing estates in England and founding agricultural training colonies thereon. This scheme is based on the report of a sub committee, Which spent several months in djaw'ng up a rough scheme, aud to this is added a description of the results of such charitable agricultural colonies in Holland. A careful study of the long-continued operations of these Dutch associations, as set forth by the committee themselves, leads us to the belief that these have proved to be unmitigated evils, for while providing a comfortable, but spiritless, life for a few hundred families, they have set a premium oh pauperism, and are breeding up a race of children whose only destiny is to be paupers like their fathers. Of course, the English scheme, if it ever came to fruition, is to be different from the Dutch; but no differentiation of detail can get rid of the central fact that to take a man and rot him to task-work, in exchange for food and clothes, is the vej-y way of teaching Idm seb-rctianae, foresight, energv, and thrift. Meanwhile a new sub committee has been appointed to inquire further into the matter, to consider offers of land, and to work out the figures more in detail. If the scheme is ever offered to the public by the Conference, the most destructive criticism will be found in words we have quoted from the Reference Committee, and jn the accounts of foreign failure. The plain truth is that, among all men who crowd to relief works, there are not five, there are probably, not two, per hundred who possess those qualities which in all ages and in all times hive been necessary to ensure an independent livelihood. With these mon nothing can be done It is with the children we must deal. The other day we found that out of e ch one hundred beys of sufficiently bad behaviour and antecedents to be sent to Industrial Schools, eighty-three cm he put in the way of permanent welld iug. To day we discover that out of each one hundred able bodied men of supposed good character, only seventeen can be helped, and those but doubtfully. The comparison of the figures is sufficient. Our progress mu-t be on the line that offers the least resistance.