Though we think that Mr. Burns has administered the Unemployed
Act as well as it was possible to administer so unsound a piece of legislation, we are convinced that in reality no special enactment was required, and that it would have been far better, in the interests both of the unemployed and of the nation, to have dealt with cases of acute distress under the existing Poor Law. We affirm that the money, public and private, which has been spent of late years on the unemployed has proved not merely the futility, but the danger and demoralisation, of such expenditure. The country can have just as many unemployed as it likes to pay for. Provide a Parliamentary fund for the endowment of the unemployed and you call the unemployed into exist- ence. By our recent legislation we have created a new pro- fession,—that of unemployment. That is a truth which Socialists and Liberal doctrinaires will not hear without indignation and resentment, but it is none the less a truth.
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