AN EXPERIMENT AND ITS LESSON
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—It will interest all who helped with the Homecroft Cottages in 1926, or who contributed recently to their im- provement in memory of the late Dr. George Vivian Poore, to know that in spite of the adversity of the times, those in charge of the Homecroft experiment believe that they have broken new ground in the treatment of unemployment. They are now ready to communicate with others ; and they are em- boldened at the same time to appeal for the means to keep the original demonstration in order, and to propagate the principle it is built to exhibit, until the light it casts on a national situation of hitherto almost unrelieved blackness has time to stir hope in the public mind.
To state the outcome briefly. Even if the hosts of British unemployed never earn wages again, we seem to have seen how they can achieve independence by companies-- by making for one another on the model of the Homecroft family, We know that a family of live or six with a fair wage coining in can add food to its resources. We believe that a family extended to several times that number could add so much more as hardly even to need a dole.
Rumour of " voluntary work by the unemployed " is now heard on all sides. We deliberately advocate, selfish as it may seem, that at least one band of workers in every voluntary centre be encouraged to devote themselves to themselves ; till a "family of five hundred," working, as the late Mr. Strachey said, " for its own sustenance and not for sales," is a sight familiar in the land. Our problem was to find an alternative tl living by wages. We think it soluble. And to all who will value them, such advice or suggestions (on the necessary machinery, &c.) as we can give will be gladly given, so far as our resources reach. Letters should be addressed as under.- -I
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