The unemployment returns from the " black " areas of
the coal, iron and steel industries are very discouraging. The Prime Minister has sent a circular to employers urging them in the spirit of the Report of the Industrial Transfer Board to try to find room in prosperous industries for unemployed men from the suffering areas. We hope that there will be a successful answer to his appeal, and we see no reason why there should not be a large aggregate of engagements of single workers or small groups, and this is a time for local authorities to put in hand any really useful development work that they have in view. The Labour Exchanges have the machinery for bringing the parties together and it will be a test of their power to promote the mobility of labour. That was one of their original purposes and the best excuse for the introduction of bureaucratic methods into the realm of free contract. But to engage unwanted labour in order to pay wages is charity, not economics, though maybe none the worse for that in our present emergency. We must, however, not rashly forget that economic laws will assert themselves. There is a limit to the power of employers to create employment or to employ workers who do not really earn their wages.
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