BRITAIN'S OUT-OFWORKS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 14977, 24 April 1909, Page 11

BRITAIN'S OUT-OF-WORKS.

THE REMEDY FOR UNEMPLOTMENT. A FAR-REACHING SCHEME. [Fkom Orn Cohjusspoxdext.] LONDON, March 12. Mr Sidney Webb, the economist, speaking in St James's Hall a few nights ago, declared:—"Unemployment can bo remedied at once, in a single session of Parliament, without a revolution in any sease, at tho cost of only one or two millions." This very striking, not to say sensational, statement was made in all seriousness by one of the most level-headed and bestinformed publicists of the day. Mr Webb, in making it, was offering no magical panacea to cure England's industrial woes. He expressly repudiated tho blind sort of faith which airily declared that all these ills would bo cured under Socialism. You cannot, he said, euro unemployment with one word —whether that word be Socialism or Mesopotamia. Nor could you cure with two words—Tariff Reform. It called for hard thinking, and much work and administrative experience, which could only bo acquired in actual practice. The remedy for unemployment to which Mi' Webb referred is outlined in tho Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission. After an Immense amount of investigation, study and the Commissioners who signed that report boldly announced this conclusion: " We have to report that, in our judgment, it is now administratively possible, if it is sincerely wished to do so, to remedy most of the evils of unemployment-." The first essential step is to organise the facilities for obtaining work by means of a national system of labour exchanges. These exchanges would bring the out-of-work in touch with the employer wanting men. Instead of having to tramp scores of miles in search of a job, ho would go to tho nearest exchange, register his application, and obtain far more information than ho could hope to gain personally as to vacancies in all parts of the country. In Germany the public exchanges fill two million situations per annum in this way. In the case of casual labour, employers woild be compelled to hire what men they needed, at tho labour exchanges, and".'the aim of the exchange would be to arrange matters so that each "casual" should have a full week's work. This would moan entirely squeezing out the surplus labour. At Liverpool 'docks, for instance, there are 15,000 dockers, but only work for a maximum of 10,000. In order that 10,000 might be regu- , larly employed, 5000 would have to bo squeezed out, and for these 5000 other provision would be made. 1 A great deal of the present boylabour would also be squeezed out under the minority scheme. The ranty of casual labour are largely recruited from boys who have " grown out of their jobs." and been turned adrift without any trade, at their fingers' ends. To .remedy this evil it is proposed that hoys from fifteen to eighteen should not be employed longer" than thirty-hours a week, and that every boy should attend a training school for an average of five hours a clay. For girls a similar scheme is proposed, including instruction in domestic science. This halving of boy and girl labour would make situations for thousands of underemployed men and women. It is further proposed that the hours of railway and tramway servants shall be reduced to sixty, if not to forty-eight hours a week. The more work there is provided in these ways for men, the less necessary will it* be for women to go into the" labour market and undcr-sell male labour.

To counteract the effects of prolonged periods' of trado depression, tho report suggests that, say, £40,000,000 of tho £150,000,000 now spent annually by national and local governments should be set apart to bo spent on necessary public works when depressions set in. This would tend to regularise the demand for labour. The surplus labour sifted out by these processes of organising the labour demand would have to be carefully graded and classified, and assisted according ,to their, willingness to work. Insurance against unemployment through trado unions would be encouraged by tho State, as in Germany. Unskilled, out-of-works would be provided with maintenance and training with a view to restoring them to the labour market improved instead of deteriorated by their term of unemployment. For those who fight sky of work, for the tramps, the wastrels, the rogues out ol caol, there would be a detention colony, but not on tho lines of a penal settlement, for the aim of the treatment would be to restore their selfrespect rather than merely to punish them. If they earned the riftflt to their freedom by showing a'willingness to work, they would be given a fresh chance outside the colony. In this way tho demoralised loafers and pitiablelooking beggars who infest the streets of the great cities would be cleared oft, and sot to work in the detention colony. To direct tho whole scheme a Minister of Labour would be appointed., with a seat in the Cabinet, and Labour would have a Government Department to itself, under his control, touch in brief outline is the scheme, and it tho Government is sincere in its desire to grapple with tho unemployment problem, it will surely give this project its most serious consideration. Mr Wobb, in saying that the remedy could be applied in a single session, did not mean that the evils of unemployment could be got rid of so promptly as all that. What he urged was that the machinery designed to remedy these evils could bo set going in a single session, and from that, moment the° work of organising demand and supply iu tho national labour market would bo begun, the wastage stopped, and the evils treated at their source. From that time onward, as .the organisation was perfected and the administrators acquired the necessary experience, unemployment would be a diminishing evil, and in a few years could be practically eliminated, with all its attendant miseries and horrors. . _ And the cost? No doubt the cost is great, but it is small indeed compared with what unemployment is costing England to-day, not only in money, but in demoralised and wasted lives, in ruined homes, ill sickness, disease and crime, in human suffering and misery. And if the money spent will cure these evils, the gain will far outweigh the cost. ________