When the out-of-work donation was instituted after the armistice, we
said that it was sure to Le abused if it were not carefully regulated. What we expected has come to pass. Sir John Butcher in Monday's Times stated that in the South and West of Ireland—where there are very few of the unemployed munition-workers or the discharged sailors and soldiers for whom the donation was intended—the new grant has been most scan- dalously misapplied. It has been given to small farmers and milkmaids, and to girls or married women who had not been employed outside their homes. Moreover, farm labourers earning twenty-six or twenty-seven shillings a week have left their employment in order to draw twenty-nine shillings a week for doing nothing, at a time when farm labour is scarce. We have no doubt that many similar cages have occurred in Great Britain. Not only is the public money wasted, but an impression is created that the volume of unemployment is far greater than it really is. The men and women who refuse work so long as they can get the donation can hardly be blamed. But the folly and laxity of the Departments responsible for so gross an abuse of the State's charity deserve the severest condemnation.
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