At the meeting of the London County Council on Tuesday
some very striking figures were given as to the value of work done by the unemployed,—figures which amply prove the truth of a remark which we have made again and again in the Spectator. Pauper labour, like slave laboup, is almost worth- less. Work was done this winter in the London parks to the value of £7,800. It cost the Central Unemployed Body to accomplish this no less than £59,220. In other words, work which labourers hired in the open market and paid high wages could have done for 27,800 cost £51,420 more when done by the unemployed,—that is, by men who knew that they would: hot be discharged if they idled, and who had no interest da their work, but only in their wages. That, we venture to say, is. the ;type of work which will be universal when the. State is the sole employer, and when men do not choose their own form of work, but have it found for them by that beneficent despot. It would, of course, have been fax cheaper to have given an allowance to the unemployed, and not gone through the pretence of work. To assert that the dignity of labour is maintained by such a transaction as that which we are recording is ridiculous. There is, indeed, • nothing new in all this. The Commissioners of 1834, and all experienced Poor Law authorities since, have always insisted on the demoralisation and extravagance of relief works.
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