DISCOVERY 



289 



is to discover preventive measures of an adequate and 

 practicable kind ; it is consequently necessary to fall 

 back on palliatives to a larger measure than would at 

 first sight appear desirable. 



I. (a) The causes of general depressions of trade 

 might be counteracted, to some extent at least, by 

 regularising the national demand for labour. If the 

 Central and Local Authorities arranged programmes of 

 their less pressing work for several years in advance, for 

 a period roughly corresponding to a cycle of trade, and 

 gave out as little of the work as possible during good 

 years, and as much as possible during lean years, 

 something would be achieved towards diminishing 

 the severity of the slumps. 



(b) The time lost between losing one job and finding 

 another could be reduced by an efficient system of 

 Labour Exchanges which would place workers looking 

 for jobs and employers seeking labour promptly in 

 touch with one another. Efficient Labour Exchanges 

 could also help to dovetail together winter and 

 summer seasonal employments, and to eliminate 

 casual labour by concentrating the demand for and 

 the supply of labour in a few definite places. 



(c) Training centres might be established with the 

 twofold object of assisting workers to acquire a new 

 trade, where their old one was overstocked, or person- 

 ally unsuitable, and of placing inefficients upon their 

 feet by giving men the training they previously lacked. 



We have not space critically to examine any of 

 these suggestions, to the carrying out of which there 

 are undoubtedly serious practical difficulties. At the 

 moment, however, when the country is suffering from 

 an acute outbreak of unemployment, the immediate 

 problem is to find palliatives ; it is a case for bottles 

 of medicine and not for preventive measures. 



2. (a) Manual workers are not the only people who 

 suffer from irregularity in employment and in income. 

 The professional classes, for example, are subject to 

 similar fluctuating conditions. Their way of meeting 

 the problem is to lay by some of their income in good 

 times in order to provide for bad times. This arrange- 

 ment, even if successfuly carried out, does not eliminate 

 lack of work at certain periods, but it does do away 

 with the worst consequence of unemployment, viz., 

 absence of the means of buying the necessaries of life. 

 In the first place, it is open to manual workers, as 

 individuals, to adopt the same method. In the second 

 place, as an alternative or in addition, they may adopt 

 a plan by which they form themselves into groups and 

 provide jointly against the risks of unemployment. This 

 is a system of voluntary insurance such as the out-of- 

 work benefit schemes provided by trade unions. In 

 the third place, the State may intervene and estab- 

 lish a system of compulsory insurance, financed from 

 contributions made by workers, employers, and the 



State itself. Under the existing State unemployment 

 insurance scheme, so far as different trades are covered, 

 all adult workers on the one hand, and all employers 

 on the other, pay equal contributions, although 

 the liabihty to unemployment varies considerably 

 from industry to industry. It has been suggested that 

 each industry should assume financial responsibility 

 for its own unemployed, and in theory, if not in prac- 

 tice, there is a good deal to be said for the suggestion. 



(6) When there is not enough work to provide 

 employment for all in an industry, the work may be 

 rationed, so that all may be employed part-time, 

 instead of some being discharged whilst the rest work 

 full-time. 



(c) Relief works may be established, though this 

 method is by no means free from difficulties. The 

 selection of the work is one difficulty ; the fact that 

 it is almost impossible to find suitable tasks for skilled 

 workers is a second ; the fixing of rates of pay is a 

 third ; the costliness of such undertaking is a fourth ; 

 and arising out of that, the question as to what 

 Authority is to finance the relief works is a fifth. 



{d) Relief orders may be placed by Public Authorities, 

 the work to be carried out by the ordinary channels of 

 industry and not through special undertakings as in 

 the case of relief works. The orders given out would 

 be either to supply in advance future requirements of 

 the Central and Local Authorities, or else to provide a 

 stock of standard goods to be sold at home or abroad 

 when trade conditions were more favourable. The 

 former type of orders, which are along the lines of the 

 scheme for the regularisation of the national demand 

 for labour referred to above, would appear much to be 

 preferred to the latter type of orders. Production for 

 stock is a very tickhsh operation, liable to depress the 

 market at a later date, and to cause the holder of 

 the stock heavy losses through depreciation. Pro- 

 duction for stock may easily develop into a gigantic 

 speculation ; private producers, when they themselves 

 shoulder the risks involved, are the only people 

 likely to handle the delicate problem with the right 

 combination of boldness and caution. 



[e) The State may create or guarantee fresh credit 

 in favour of industry and trade. This policy appears 

 to be first cousin to the currency inflation policy referred 

 to previously. It is doubtful whether there is any 

 lack of credit facilities at the present time ; the trouble 

 seems to be that there are no sound uses to which 

 fresh credit can be put. 



(/) Experience shows that it is not easy to har- 

 monise " relief " and " work," so that " rehef works " 

 may be abandoned in favour of, or supplemented 

 by, " relief " or " maintenance," as it is nowadays 

 frequently called. The assistance provided by Boards 

 of Guardians and the " out-of-work donations " paid 



