122 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



which is known to be working injuriously to national interests, 

 is as much an injustice and a grievous wrong to the people as 

 though the rulers of the land took horse and foot and swept 

 the country, spoiling the people of their possessions and render- 

 ing "Eight to work" impossible. Every member of Parlia- 

 ment, whether of the Lords or Commons, knows full well the 

 difficulties which beset labour, the ever-present menace of 

 Unemployment, and the grave dangers to the national pros- 

 perity and the national peace arising therefrom, and yet — he 

 makes no sign ! In this negative attitude he evinces no desire 

 to relieve the situation, and therefore shows a callous disregard 

 of the people's wrongs amounting to positive inimicality to their 

 interests. Every economist, and " scientific " writer on this 

 vast yet simple question of the people's employment ; every 

 " learned professor " who makes his home among cults and 

 " ologies " and " isms " of all sorts and conditions ; and every 

 man who, out of the subtlety of his own intellect, his love of 

 contention, or who for any other cause helps to still further 

 increase the difficulties with which this elementary subject 

 has been already invested by a host of controversialists : would 

 be as much an enemy of the people of this country as though 

 he deliberately plotted their destruction. 



Labouk Question sorely Misunderstood 



This perfectly simple question of — how to employ the people, 

 has, during the last two or three decades, been made the 

 centre of so much disputation, political trickery, and class 

 interests ; it has been so pulled and hauled about to serve the 

 interests of this party or the other ; it has been made so to serve 

 the Free-trader at one time and the Protectionist at another, 

 and has become so battered and disfigured in the process, that 

 no man now-a-days recognises it for the question it really is. 

 It has been lifted entirely out of its native region and planted 

 amid surroundings that are as foreign to its nature as the arid 

 wastes of Sahara would be to the Alpine rose. 



It has been pointed out in these pages that the trouble 

 arose because we disobeyed one of Nature's simple laws — a 

 fundamental error in simple economy which can be remedied 

 with perfect ease. In other words, we foolishly cut off, sixty 

 years ago, the people's chief source of employment — agriculture 

 — and from that time the mischief commenced. Year by year, 

 more and more land went out of cultivation, and more and 

 more people were thrown out of employment. For a time all 

 went well, because our growing trade and expanding manufactures 

 absorbed the overflow of labour from the land ; but now it is 



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