Economic Waste. 483 



destitute is the business of the State; few people dispute that the 

 care of the public health, the protection of the individual against 

 violence, either intentional or through negligence ; the provision of 

 education, whether elementary or advanced, is the business of the 

 State. Is it, then, too much to assert that the provision (if it be 

 possible) of work for the unemployed, for those for whom private 

 enterprise finds no use, is also the business of the State? That it 

 would have to be undertaken with care goes without saying ; what is 

 wanted is, I think, to deal with the residuum, not to revolutionise the 

 whole industrial system, and great care would be needed to find 

 employment for the residuum without disorganising the whole of 

 our industries. Nevertheless, I believe it could be done — I believe 

 such work could be found that, while it provided in the end a 

 valuable increment to the nation's assets, no injury was in the present 

 inflicted on the rest of the nation, except, perhaps, a temporary 

 increase of taxation, which would be almost met by the relief from 

 high poor rates, and the necessity for private charity which now 

 exists. 



It is objected, and sometimes rightly objected, that for the State 

 to turn producer would be to seriously and unfairly interfere with 

 other producers. Take in a small way, for instance, goods produced 

 with convict labour. If prisoners in gaol make brushes or mats or 

 any articles of that sort, the sale of such goods is unfair competition 

 against other manufacturers who employ free labour. If the State 

 were to undertake to find work for the unemployed in England by 

 hiring or buying land and putting all the unemployed to raise wheat, 

 it is conceivable that it might lower the price of wheat all round, 

 and so affect the wages of those at present in work, or throw more 

 of them out of work, and so increase the very evil it was intended to 

 cure. Despite Carlyle's forcible asseveration that with thousands 

 of bare backs it is absurd to talk of over-production of shirts, as a 

 practical matter the manufacture by the Government with unemployed 

 labour, of shirts to cover these backs might very seriously interfere 

 with the legitimate and normal industry of shirt-making, and have 

 disastrous results. The problem, then, is to find some method in 

 which the waste labour of the unemployed might be turned to useful 

 account without disorganising industries which are at present benefici- 

 ally employing a large amount of labour. Now, I do not believe this 

 is impossible, even in England, though the problem there has reached 

 huge dimensions. Surely there are some things like harbour works, 

 road improvements, water conservation, drainage of waste land, 

 redemption of ground from the sea, and so on, which might be 

 undertaken in order to provide work when other work is not obtain- 

 able, and which, in the end, would yield a very considerable asset 

 to the national wealth without in the meantime in any way interfering 

 with the normal industries of the country. Labour so employed 

 would form a most valuable industrial reserve, from which \vorkmen 

 could always be obtained when the condition of other industries 

 rendered more labour in ^hem necessary, as public works of the kind 

 I have indicated could easTly be abandoned for a time whenever, or if 



