482 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



plentiful, but it will only be for a time, and the inevitable swing 

 of the pendulum will again throw hundreds of thousands out of 

 work, and the Economic Waste begin again, with the inevitable 

 deterioration, moral and physical, of the workers, which, as I have 

 pointed out before, idleness brings in its train. 



Is there no remedy? Is it one of the inevitable evils to which 

 the human race is doomed, and from which there is no escape, and 

 which increased civilization only seems at times to accentuate ? 



I will not pause to enquire how, if it were so, anyone could 

 believe that this world of ours is the creation of a beneficent Deity, 

 and governed by wise and kindly laws, because, though in our 

 churches and on the Sabbath Day we devoutly recognise the Deity 

 and profess the Christian faith, any appeal to the doctrines of 

 Christianity as a working basis for practical life is as futile in 

 the case of the nominal Christian as in that of the avowed atheist ; 

 but, keeping strictly to the Economic aspect of the question, I say 

 unhesitatingly that escape is possible, that it is not the laws of 

 nature, but the conventions of man, that are responsible for the 

 waste and the misery it entails. It is partly, no doubt, our selfish- 

 ness that is to blame, but it is, I think, still more our ignorance and 

 our narrowness of view. The old laissez faire policy has been tried 

 and found wanting. Can we not substitute for it any better system 

 with happier results? 



Now, you will say it is easy to raise a question such as this, and 

 to point out evils and defects, but have you anything practical to 

 offer as a solution of them? 



Not much, I fear. I plead equal ignorance with the rest of the 

 world, but the first step towards knowledge is to recognise our 

 ignorance ; we have gained something when we even recognise that 

 we do not know a thing, and if from that we go on with a resolute 

 determination to find out all we can about it, some day, somewhere, 

 somehow, the solution may be found. 



To me, it seems almost self-evident that the individual is power- 

 less to remedy this evil, that the combination of at least a whole 

 nation, what we commonly call the State, must in some way be 

 called in to help — possibly the solution cannot finally be found till 

 we have a combination of States ; but I think some advance might be 

 made by modifying our system of leaving all industrial affairs to 

 the individual, and at least experimenting in the direction of State 

 interference on behalf of the unemployed. We are told it is not 

 the business of the State, and we are told this by such good authori- 

 ties that I feel most diffident in daring to assert otherwise. Never- 

 theless, I do so assert, for it seems to me that the question of the 

 unemployed is most essentially the business of the State. No one 

 disputes that the protection of our trade and of our industries is 

 the proper business of the State ; no one disputes that the encourage- 

 ment of our trade and of our industries, by such means as the 

 provision of good harbours, of easy and safe means of communica- 

 tion, and so forth, is the business of the State ; no one disputes that 

 the providing of at least a minimum of food and shelter for the 



