• GROUP HOMECROFTING FOR THE - UNEMPLOYED
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I wonder how many of those who helped The Spedator to start the National Homecroft Association in 1926, or who contributed to its subsequent improvement in memory of the late Dr. George Vivian Poore, will see the completeness, of the answer it provides to the impressive despair of" Unem- ployed," in the leading letter of your issue of February 24th..
That writer's position is, of course, despair. The only cure for unemployment is work ; work means work for wages ; and since it is not forthcoming, what is the use of calling for it ? And to demand work "for profit" would be quite as hopeless.
To those for whom these things have long been plain, however, there is still a great principle left ; namely work for sustenance. So far, we of the Homecroft movement have applied it to families. This spring we are applying it to groups. A group will work for itself, like a family. The members will leave their work in a common pool. They will not take away every night, the work they have done that day, for that is wasteful ; and they will not take away money-wages every night, for that would at once interfere with their dole. They will take simply tickets torn from a book, which enable them to draw on the pool. And a man can draw anything up to the value of the tickets he has, whether he has made it or not.
The Homecroft Association have had magnificent encour- agement to start this pool by the offer of University and other students to come to Cheltenham and help to make it. The students—mostly W elsh and all alike poor—are offering to pay their fares and the whole of their own expenses, as well as giving their labour ; and we have strong hopes that this fine gesture will itself help to bring the indispensable funds. but what I would fain see noted at present, is simply the nature of the thing which is started, if they do succeed in getting the tools and equipment necessary, and in getting a group of unemployed, subsequently, to come in and carry on working" for sustenance and not sales " ; that is, working for nothing but paper claims on their own pool. It is worth some thought ; being nothing else than the principle of a domestic currency. Some might call it the logical alternative to the gold standard, applied on a miniature scale. In any case it gets to the root of the despair. If readers will lay the proposal alongside the demands—as salutary as they are arresting—of " Unemployed," I believe they will see for themselves that it answers them, in the only way in which
they are answerable.-1 am, Sir, &c., J. W. Scorr, 88 Charles Street, Hon. Secretary, National
Cardiff. ilnmecroft Association, Ltd.
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