UNEMPLOYMENT 121 



miner; our workers in every trade and industry throughout 

 the country ; clerks, sliop-assistants, actors, artists, barristers, 

 doctors, parsons, and every man, woman and child in the 

 kingdom, are all more or less touched by, and personally 

 interested in, this great question of Labour ; Wokk ; Employ- 

 ment, or whatever term we prefer to use, and yet — although 

 it be as widespread as ocean and as essential to human exist- 

 ence as the air we breathe — it is, alas ! as little understood by 

 the vast majority of the people as though it were some abstruse 

 astronomical problem, or some far away — unknown quantity. 



Work and employment have, at all events, been accepted 

 by man as a fitting destiny, and, as a rule, it may be said that 

 the lot has been cheerfully accepted and courageously borne, 

 while it may be truthfully added that — it is not labour man 

 fears, but the lack of it ; not employment that he dreads, but 

 — Unemployment. 



Employ the people, and let the employment be lucrative 

 and universal, and peace — as far as it is humanly possible to 

 ensure that blessed quantity in this turbulent world — reigns 

 supreme ; but create unemployment by the means of unwise 

 laws and fatuous administration, and Demos becomes restive, 

 discontented and dangerous. 



Who are Labour's Enemies? 



Work, then, is man's destined lot ; his inheritance, and his 

 —Eight, and, this being so, it is necessary that every precaution 

 should be taken by one and all, especially by those charged 

 with the government of the country and the administration of 

 popular affairs, to ensure for the people the means of employ- 

 ment, as well as of its stability. To encompass this condition, 

 which is essential to the well-being of the body politic as food 

 is to material man, it becomes obvious that no means tu tliis 

 end should be neglected, no source of employment overlooked, 

 and no trade, profession or industry sacrificed. Everything 

 that in any way tends, directly or indirectly, to help in the 

 creation of new sources of employment, or the maintenance 

 of old ones, should be carefully noted and jealously conserved, 

 and no earthly consideration should be permitted, for a single 

 instant, to inihieuce, even by a hair's breadth, those who are 

 entrusted by the people with the management of the people's 

 atlairs. Any measure that may be taken by those in authority, 

 for the time being, that would tend to deprive them of employ- 

 ment, would be inimical to the people themselves, and therefore, 

 dc facto, an act of hostility to the commonwealth. Every un- 

 repealed Act standing on the national Statute book to-day, 



