We have, unfortunately, little space in which to deal with
the very important and significant matter of unemployment
pay which was dealt with in Parliament on Wednesday. We can only record the fact that the Bill provided for an increase in contributions and a reduction of benefits. The new scheme is estimated to cost some £9,000,000. We must note, however, with great satisfaction that Mr. Austin Hopkinson, from whom clear light always come on economic subjects, told his Labour friends that " every penny spent on out-of-work pay meant mare unemploymtnt." That, of course, is absolutely true. It was written large and in letters of blood and fire over the whole miserable history of the French Revolution of 1848. In France some 12,000 men perished in learning the lesson on the barricades. Mr. Hopkinson welcomed the Bill as a sign " that the Govern- ment are drifting in the direction of economic sanity," a state- ment which certainly shows him to possess an optimistic tempera- ment—an excellent thing in an economist in these days.
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