The Government, as we said last week, are seriously examining
Sir Alfred Mond's scheme for diverting the dole so as to subsidize wages in certain depressed industries. Sir Alfred Mond has issued a pamphlet explaining his scheme in full. We have not yet seen the pamphlet, but in a letter to the Times of Monday he described broadly how the scheme would work. We agree with Sir Alfred Mond that the organization of the industrial world has vastly improved in the last 100 years and that the disastrous results of the rate-aided wages after the Napoleonic Wars might not appear in exactly the same form to-day. All the same, we cannot see how it is possible wholly to get rid of the difficulty that a' firm employing State-subsidized workers would be an unfair competitor (or would at all events be regarded as such) as against firms which were not chosen as deserving of help. It cannot be desirable that firms which are in a sense the least deserving of help should get the most help.
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