466 



PRESIDENT S ADDRESS — SECTION Gl. 



Schemes to assist the temporarily unemployed have been many 

 and varied. Those with some pretence to an economic basis are : — 



(a) State or socialistic schemes. The municipal schemes are 

 as old as Rome. They may succeed or not. The Paris National 

 Works of 1848 were a gigantic failure and nearly ended in industrial 

 chaos. The relief works during the Lancashire cotton famine were 

 a pronounced success. In the winter months in England attempts 

 have been made to find work in the way of road-making, street 

 sweeping, snow cleaning, excavating and levelling ground for new 

 parks, but the experiments show only negative results. 



The constant danger in temporary relief works is that they 

 tend to become permanent, and the cure is worse than the disease. 

 Here are the bare totals of Berlin's experience — a city where no 

 experience has been left untried, ?nd where the bill is mounting 

 every year : — 



Perhaps it is a similar twist in human nature that leads to the 

 amazing yearly increase in old age pensions in the Commonwealth, 

 in Great Britain, and wherever this relief remedy is being tried. 



To ensure success of municipal schemes, there should be : — 

 An inquiry into the bona fides of applicants. 

 A careful selection and grading of applicants. 

 Works that will pay the municipality. 

 Absence of political interference. 

 Work for half-time only. And 

 Less than current wages. 



But these very essentials scare the loafer away and leave the ranks 

 of the unemployed — ^good, bad and indifferent — almost as crowded 

 as ever. Nor have municipalities been particularly happy in the 

 experience of finding or making work. The municipal workshop 

 has become too often the receptacle of the worthless, and 

 the General Purposes Committee of the Corporation of 

 Birmingham found it necessary at last to " fall back on the 

 sound principle that municipalities exist for certain limited public 

 functions, and not to find relief for everyone out of work." 



Trade unions are more successful in their methods, and the 

 reasons are obvious. They have knowledge of their own trade, and 

 the state of the labour market within it. They can regulate trade, 

 restrict overtime, spread and equalise work, restrict apprentices, 

 collect dues, dispense unemployed and travelling benefits, manage 

 relief that it is to every member's interest to see that no member 

 is unemployed. But trade unions of to-day are particularly careful 



