RELthI' FOR THE UNEMPLOYED.
HERE is reason to believe that trade is reviving and that the numbers of persons out of work are diminish- ing, but the problem of unemployment is none the less very serious. The Cabinet Committee which began on Tuesday to consider measures of relief was informed that on Septem- ber 2nd 1,527,000 unemployed persons were registered at the so-called Employment Exchanges, while about t00,000 more were working short time. Two months ago, at the end of the disastrous miners' strike, which was a prime cause of the present distress, 2,170,000 persons were out of work and 988,000 were working short time. The state of the labour market is thus better than it was, as a quarter of the unemployed have found work, and more than half of the people on short time are now fully employed. The fact remains that a million and a-half persons can find nothing to do for a living, and are subsisting on public and private charity. Most of them are drawing weekly doles under the unemployment insurance scheme, but no fewer than 290,000 persons, having received pay for twenty-two weeks, have exhausted their right to benefit. From November 2nd, under the new Act, they will be entitled to fresh benefit for sixteen weeks ; meanwhile these 290,000 persons, and others whose insurance doles will soon cease, must seek relief from the parish. It is this minority which the unscrupulous Labour extremists are seeking to use for their own revolutionary purposes. The Communists at Poplar have set out to destroy our system of local govern- ment by paying the unemployed more than they would earn by honest work, at the expense of the ratepayers, and then refusing to levy rates for the ordinary county services. At Islington a Labour Board of Guardians began to pay unemployed persons up to 73s. 6d. a week, until it was checked by the Ministry of Health, and reminded that poor relief must not equal the normal wages of a workman. At Liverpool, the unemployed, led by a Nonconformist minister, raised a riot on Monday in the centre of the city and fought the police. Similar scenes of violence are re- ported from Dundee and a few other places, but for the most part the firebrands havefailed to entice the unemployed into creating disorder. The good sense and the patience which honourably distinguish the British workman have not been eclipsed by the sad experiences of this long trade depression. The people out of work know that they are all receiving some assistance, either from the insurance funds or from the poor rates, and that though there is much poverty there is no actual destitution. One would have to be a doctrinaire of the type of Bentham or Marx to contemplate this terrible human problem without emotion. It is pitiful to think of the hundreds of thousands of decent God-fearing men and women who are trying vainly to find work or who are sunk in despair after months of unavailing search. Yet it is clear that we must try to face the question calmly and dispassionately, lest by acting in haste or on wrong lines we make matters worse instead of better. Bolshevik Russia, ruined and starving, is an awful example of the misery that may be caused to a once prosperous community by the false theories of frenzied men. The problem here is one of ways and means. We have to assist the unemployed without at the same time injuring those who are at work. It should be obvious that, if the poor rates were increased without limit in order to give every unemployed person a full week's wages at trade union rates, many employers would have to close their works and the number of un- employed would rapidly increase, until most ratepayers were in receipt of poor relief. The whole social fabrio would. then collapse. There must, of course; be a limit to the amount of relief; whether from insurance funds or from the poor rates, that can be paid. The Labour Party, being entirely irresponsible, cries out for " full work or full maintenance." Full maintenance is out of the ques- tion, but the alternative of full work has a specious air which attracts many people who are not Socialists. It is easy to draw up schemes of public works that might be carried out and that would be beneficial to the community, and to suggest that the unemployed—regarded in theory as a mass of navvies—should be set to work on these schemes forthwith. We have no doubt that the Ministry of Recon- struction, which provided agreeable occupation for Dr. Addison and a large and well-paid staff during the latter part of the war, formulated some attractive projects of this, kind. But the question is by no means so simple as all that Many of the unemployed town-dwellers are wholly unfit for rough manual labour on reclamation works, even if it were possible to take them to the coastal districts or the moorlands where the work has to be done, and to house them when they arrived. A fourth of the unem- ployed are women. We must not delude ourselves into the belief that the State under this orleny other dispensa- tion can create employment for an unlimited number of persons in various trades who are out of work because the demand—especially the foreign demand—for the goods which they make, and at the prices which they ask, has temporarily ceased. All that the State can do for most of them is what it is now doing—namely, to give them a modest weekly allowance which will help them to tide over the bad times.
On the other hand, it should be possible for the State and the local authorities to find work for some of the un- employed on the roads. It is notorious that the rapid development of the motor, and especially the heavy lorry, charabanc, or omnibus, has made many of our roads posi- tively unsafe. The roads are neither wide enough nor strong enough for the new traffic. They must be recon- structed. on modern lines, broadened, and regraded. At many dangerous corners it is necessary to remove the hedges and widen the roadway, so as to prevent accidents. In and near the great towns, and especially London, new arterial highways are urgently required. The roads will be used more and more in preference to the railways for commercial purposes, and it is imperative that they should be fitted for their new functions. We are glad, therefore, to see that the Cabinet Committee proposes to encourage local authorities to take up the work of road- making in earnest, whether by making fresh grants to them or by assisting them to raise loans. Better roads are wanted ; such of the unemployed as are capable of handling a spade or wheeling a barrow should be set to work on the roads forthwith. Millions of men during the war found that with a little practice they could dig very creditable trenches. Though most of the unemployed are not of the class from which our battalions were recruited, a considerable number of them would be found, capable of doing this kind of work.
We must not expect such relief: work to be economically profitable: The nation will benefit by getting better roads, as well as by restoring self-respect to number of men who are idle through no fault of their own, but it is no good pretending that the work will be done as cheaply as if it were undertaken in the ordinary way by contractors who have to make their living by their business. Relief works never pay, in the commercial sense. Mr. Harold Cox, in the course of an admirable article in the current Sunday Times, has recalled some striking instances of the wastefulness of such attempts " to. set the poor to work." In 1903 the Manchester Corporation reported that it had ;pent £18,774 upon labour employed, during a time of distress,, on. making roads and laying out parks, but that the actual value of the work done was only £5,487. Stepney in the winter of 1901-5 laid up its road-sweeping machines and set the unemployed men to brush the streets, with the result that work which might have been done for £486 cost the ratepayers £3,569. In 1906 the Central Unem- ployed body for London found work for unemployed men in reclaiming some land at Fambridge ; £18,000 was spent, but the value of the reclaimed. land was only £1,000. Clearly no country, unless it was controlled by mad Com- munists, could safely indulge in many such luxuries, as relief works have always proved to be. It would soon face financial ruin, even if it escaped a violent insurrection such as that which followed• the attempt of the French Republic of 1848 to carry on Louis Blanc's " National Workshops," in which there was no work to do. The pro- posal to set the unemployed to work on the roads is admit- tedly indefensible on strictly economic grounds. All we can say for it is that more roads and better roads are badly needed and will indirectly assist the revival of trade, that the amateur road-makers and road-menders will be helped to regain their self-respect in doing national work, and that we shall at all events get something in return for the money expended, whereas doles without work are wholly unremunerative to the community. These practical reasons, though inconclusive, are sufficient to justify the Government and the local authorities for undertaking promptly the repair and improvement of the roads. Such schemes will not solve the unemployment problem, but they will at least alleviate the prevailing dis,, tress. For the true remedy we must look elsewhere. The reduction of prices by a general lowering of the cost of production is the main condition precedent to the revival of our foreign trade, which will quickly create employment in all industries.
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