[To Tag EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—Your article on "The 'Right to Work ' " in last week's issue -mentions that many men who were employed on the Manchester relief works two years ago left their work, and so forfeited their day's pay, in order to join a procession of the unemployed. A. still more discouraging statement appeared in the Quarterly Review for last January. On p. 212 of that number a Local Government Board inspector is quoted as reporting that "irregular relief work has such charms that numerous instances have been noted of men throwing up regular wages at 18s. and 19s. a week to earn 5s. to 7s. in a stone-yard." As an illustration of the cost of relief works, it is perhaps worth while recalling that in the winter of 1904-5 the borough of Stepney "abandoned the use of road-sweeping machines and employed hand labour instead." Road-sweeping by machinery used to cost the borough £486; road-sweeping by hand labour cost it 0,569. I am afraid that in only too many cases the "right to work" means the right of A, B, and C to force other members of the comm unity to buy what they neither require nor desire at a price far in excess of the
ordinary market valuc.—I am, Sir, &c., W. G. E.
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