Unemployment - We noted last week the suggestion of Sir
Herbert Samuel that our system-of relieving unemployment might be dangerous in other ways than that of demoralizing' the relieved. Sir William Beveridge in the Sidney Ball Lecture at Oxford on Friday, 'February 7th, on " The Past and Present of Unemployment Insurance," earned this criticism further. " The real danger," he said; " of unlimited relief of unemployment lies not in the fear of demoralizing individual "workmen, but in the fear of demoralizing Goverrintients, employers and Trade Union officials, so • that they take less thought about the pre- vention of unemployment." " Industries giving casual employment . . . may batten on the taxation of other industries or of the general ' public',' in place of reforming their ways." It is worth while, however, to remember in these days- of depression that the unem- ployment figures for Great Britain can be matched elsewhere. While Great Britain has approximately 1,500,000 unemployed, Germany has 2,500,000 and the United States, at a minimum estimate, 3,000,000. There is plenty of work for the new Economic Advisory Council to do in discovering why prosperity and intense unem- ployment can exist side by side. This unpleasant fact is a new phenomenon.
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