378 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— F. 



Co-operative costs appear to be lower than those of department and chain 

 stores, the average costs of co-operative retailing being 15 per cent, of 

 sales. Profits are equal to 10 per cent, of sales, and are distributed as 

 rebates on purchases ; £22,000,000 were returned to customers in this 

 manner in 1935. This device of returning profits to customers is the attrac- 

 tion which co-operative trading has for its huge membership, and is the 

 reason for its continual expansion. 



Friday, September 11. 



Presidential Address by Dr. C. R. Fay on Plantation economy (10. o). 



Miss Margaret Digby. — Russia and the Balkans : an agricultural com- 

 parison (12.0). 



The problem of all agricultural countries is the same — how to maintain 

 or achieve a civilised standard of life for a rising population on an inelastic 

 land area. The Balkans seek their solution in a voluntary intensification 

 of farming, valuable crops grown on small independent holdings with co- 

 operative marketing and finance and considerable state control of foreign 

 trade. The Soviet Union has turned to large-scale mechanised cultivation 

 of essential foodstuffs on collective farms , carried out by a membership of 

 crofter-labourers, with production minutely planned and mechanised 

 services supplied by the State but with home marketing still partly individual 

 and unorganised. How do these two systems compare in their results and 

 potentialities ? 



Afternoon. 

 Film : ' Tea Plantations ' (3.0). 



Monday, September 14. 



Sir William Beveridge, K.C.B. — An analysis of unemployment in 

 Britain (10.0). 



The total of unemployed persons recorded each month by the Ministry 

 of Labour does not consist of homogeneous units. In order to understand 

 the nature of unemployment, the total must be broken up and analysed in 

 various ways. 



1. By industries. Even industries now prosperous and expanding show 

 percentages of unemployment of 6 or more. ' Friction ' due to people 

 being of the wrong type or the wrong place to meet the demand, and 

 seasonal fluctuations, account for a very substantial volume of unemploy- 

 ment not likely to be abolished by increase in the demand for labour. On 

 the other hand, other industries, depressed and contracting, have large 

 bodies of unemployed labour for whom an increase of demand is unlikely — 

 the ' industrial level core ' of unemployment. 



a. By duration of unemployment in the individual case. About one 

 quarter of those now receiving benefit or assistance have been unemployed 

 continuously for twelve months at least — many for much longer. Sub- 

 stantially the whole addition to the total of unemployment now as compared 

 with 1929 (before the depression) consists of long-period unemployment. 

 Short-period unemployment is probably less than at any time since the war. 



3. By relation to the systems of insurance and assistance. Nearly half 

 those now recorded as unemployed in the insured industries get insurance 



