president's address — SECTION GI. 467 



in having nothing to do with the unskilled labourer, or the nomadic 

 unemployable. If legitimate trades unionism could be extended 

 to include these, it would be found a useful agent in reducing the 

 numbers of unemployed. As far back as in 1887, it was suggested 

 that a large percentage of the present unemployed could be attached 

 to different trade unions as associates enrolled on a different financial 

 footing to full members, paying a smaller subscription when in work, 

 and receiving a smaller allowance when disabled or out of work, 

 but enjoying the full use of the house of call and all registry offices 

 in connection with trades unions. An industrial map of the country 

 could be prepared, and by means of a central clearing house the 

 local adjustment of supply and demand could be accomplished. 

 " Even the wider problem of the dove-tailing of different industries 

 might be successfully attacked, and a central committee forecasting 

 annually from reliable statistics the probable supply and demand 

 for particular industries for the coming year could largely minimise 

 both surpluses and deficits." It is interesting to note that this 

 20 year- old suggestion is at last being definitely tried in Great 

 Britain. Nor is the experiment without hope of signal success. 

 Temporary depressions are inevitable and fluctuations in industry 

 carrying a temporary superfluity of labour are scarcely preventable, 

 but the remedy here is a scientific forecast from reliable statistics, 

 and a minimising of the gambling spirit in trade, so as to avoid 

 the slump that surely follows. 



Disposing of the Permanent Surplus. — I. Here the theorist 

 vies with the practical man both in number and variety of schemes. 

 A better poor law, a sweeping land tax. State labour colonies, 

 assisted immigration — these are a few of the panaceas proposed. 

 Agencies to make work are multiplied, but it must always be borne 

 in mind that there is a limit to manufactured work. The minority 

 report of the Poor Law Commission proposed that the Government 

 should find £40,000,000 of work in ten years, spreading the work 

 over the leanest periods, the work to include afforestation, coast 

 protection and land reclamation by suitable labour taken on in the 

 ordinary way at local rates. 



This is in effect a socialistic extension of the principle of labour 

 colonies. English communities have been slow to adopt these. 

 In Germany the first Labour Colony was at Wilhelmsdorf in 1882. 

 In 1894 there were 26. The colonies were established as " institu- 

 tions of Christian charity for those who have suffered inward and 

 outward shipwreck." The great bulk of the material with which 

 they have to deal is not the efficient workman, but rather the tramp, 

 the ex-prisoner, and others whose distress is caused by personal 

 defects. They became places of temporary resort for single and 

 often undesirable men. The objections to these were the frequency 

 with which inmates returned (46 per cent, is zn average taken from 

 eleven years at one institution), the large percentage of ex-prisoners 

 and ex-convicts (76 per cent, in one institution), the lowered wages, 

 the fact that the colonies are shunned by the respectable workers. 



