3832 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—F. 
(b) An almost stationary rural population. 
(c) Reorganisation of the countryside involving much equalisation in the size 
of holdings. Change from gentlemen farmers and ‘ sub-tenants ’ to working farmers ~ 
and labourers. Extinction of subsidiary rural industries. 
7. Mr. Fasran v. Kocu.—Unemployment Relief in Sweden. 
Main points: The abnormal period of unemployment is now practically at an 
end in Sweden. ‘There has as yet been no insurance scheme, but a provisional, 
rather restrictive (though quite satisfactory) system of unemployment relief which is 
being handled by the Unemployment Commission with great discretionary powers. 
Most of the funds have gone to State relief work, and only a small fraction to unemploy- 
ment benefit (doles). At present no doles but only relief work is being given. The 
principle has been laid down and approved by all political parties, Communists and 
Syndicalists excepted, that relief work wages shall in all cases and localities be less 
than ordinary wages. As a matter of fact, there are many who refuse to accept relief 
work and are then debarred from State benefit. This means that large sums can be 
set aside to support those really in need of help. In case of a trade dispute, assistance 
is withdrawn not only from those directly engaged but also from those workers, 
belonging to the same trade, who, though they may have been unemployed before 
the dispute, are considered to have an interest in common with the disputants. This 
principle is held to be sound and just. Finally, the question is discussed whether or 
not ordinary work, for instance road making, should be chosen as relief work. 
Tuesday, September 1. 
8. Mrs. Stocks.—The Economics of Family Endowment. 
The inadequate attention which theoretical economists of all ages have given ° 
to the problem of the family and its place in the economic structure has contributed 
a disastrous element of artificiality to their treatment of wages. Adam Smith is an 
outstanding exception to this rule. But Ricardo and other representatives of the 
subsistence theory are content to dismiss the matter with vague references to the 
assumption that the wage-earner must perpetuate his race. And later economists, 
rejecting the subsistence theory of wages for the marginal productivity theory, dis- 
missed the whole problem of family needs as irrelevant to the main forces determining 
the general level of wages. Meanwhile, during the latter part of the nineteenth 
century, two parallel developments occurred which derived little or no stimulus from 
the development of contemporary economic theory. One was the more effective 
statistical measurement of economic output and the facts concerning the distribution 
of wealth. The other was the growth of expert social investigation having as one of 
its objects the attempt to determine what a living wage should be, and how many people 
were in fact not getting one. From these developments emerged the fact that current 
output was insufficient to ensure the payment of a living wage (given certain historical 
developments which had placed the family in a condition of almost complete economic 
dependence) so long as the unchallenged assumption prevailed that the family must 
be provided for through the operation of a flat rate of wages determined without 
respect to the family responsibilities of the wage-earner. It was on this fact that the 
advocates of family endowment based their case. 
9. Mr. R. G. Hawrrey.— The Gold Standard and the Balance of 
Payments. 
The causes which lead to a country with a gold standard losing gold may be either 
monetary or other. Monetary causes are those affecting the purchasing power of the 
monetary unit. Disturbances so arising are due to a maladjustment of credit and are 
corrected by a suitable regulation of credit. 
Non-monetary disturbances may arise from changes in the demand or supply of 
commodities, or from movements of capital. 
Those of the former kind require an adjustment of credit, and gold movements 
only occur when the adjustment does not exactly keep pace with the disturbance. 
Capital movements may be divided into movements of long-term investments and 
movements of liquid balances or short-term securities. The operations of aninvestment 
