president's address — SECTION GI. 471 



Unemployment requiring temporary or longer assistance 

 should be helped by the Public Assistance Authority 

 (composed of members of the County Council and an 

 equal number of outside experts, women being eligible) 

 and the exchanges ; but those needing discipline should 

 be sent to detention colonies. 

 Industrial and agricultural institutions should be set up in 

 the outskirts of towns ; separate ones for women. 

 There should be labour colonies, with good conduct pay. 

 Emigration is recommended at public cost. 

 The minority report advocated a Minister for Labour to organ- 

 ise the national labour market and prevent or minimise unemploy- 

 ment. Use of the National Labour Exchange by employees should 

 be made compulsory. No one should be employed under 15 ; those 

 from 15 to 18 should work not more than 30 hours a week, and have 

 to attend trades schools for 30 hours. The Government should 

 arrange £4,000,000 of departmental work a year for ten years — the 

 work to include afforestation, coast protection and land reclamation. 

 Such expenditure to be used specially against lean periods. The 

 Government should pay each trade union half the sum it gives in 

 out-of-work benefit. All left unemployed after the above schemes 

 are in force should be assigned to day training depots or residential 

 farm colonies, their families receiving home aliment. Vagrants and 

 the like should be kept in detention colonies. 



Had the Commission set out to consider the best of the Conti- 

 nental schemes and apply them to English conditions, the report 

 would almost have been identical. If Great Britain adopts the 

 recommendation, poverty and distrfes in the United Kingdom 

 would be revolutionised. The confirmed loafer would iind his lot by 

 no means so easy as at present, and the class who really need help 

 would get it. Running right through the report is the suggestion 

 that the well-to-do should co-operate with the proposed new- 

 authorities, by personal service, with the object of improving the 

 physical and moral standard of their humbler brethren. Increasing 

 extravagance in dress, the craving for amusements, and the sub- 

 ordination to frivolity of the serious side of life are stated to be habits 

 responsible for much pauperism and distress. " If reform in these 

 directions is to be effective, the lead and example should come from 

 above." 



This report marks a new era in Great Britain's treatment of 

 pauperism and unemployment ; and with the passing o the work- 

 house and the inauguration of the new methods, it may be safe to 

 prophesy that the new conditions will differ from the old ahnost as 

 much as order and principle differ from chaos itself. The world of 

 economists wiU watch with the keenest interest Great Britain's first 

 colossal experiment to deal with poverty on scientific lines. 



In some matters, e.g., the ballot box, old age pensions, woman 

 suffrage, and a land tax, Austraha has pioneered the way for Great 

 Britain. If ever Australia comes to have as part of her heritage 

 the incubus of the unfit she will be able to learn much from the 

 present gigantic object lesson in the Homeland. 



