A scheme to modify some of the moral evils of unemployment that has attracted considerable attention is known og the Leicester scheme from the town of its inception. Its sponsors were impressed with the demoralization and waste arising from the distribution of monetary relief to the unemployed without any exchange of services, rightly believing that such gratuitous payments were in-juncus to the recipients and unfair to the community. Yet they were unable to over-ride either the legal obligation on the Guardians of giving relief to necessity ous cases, or their inability as_a body to carry on public work. To surmount the difficulty a distress committee was convened to act as a link between the Board of Guardians and the Corporation. The Corporation now finds useful work for the unemployed and its modest wage bill, corresponding to the comparative in efficiency of the unemployed "'worker,"' 1s supplemented by grants from the Guardians, bringing up the sums earned by the workers to a figure on which they can live.
Manchester and other towns proposed to adopt the scheme but the Ministry of Labour stepped in and refused to pay benefit to amy worker engaged. on it, alleging, that such relief work constitutes employment. in Leicester they continued with the scheme as the proportion of unemployed in that town is comparatively small, but the other towns refused to go on with it as they are more or less dependent on tha "dole" to supplement their relief grants which otherwise would reach an enormous figure. The unemployed in these towns are therefore compelled to carry on receiving inadequate relief "for nothing when it would have been possible to find them useful work and pay them a wage sufficient to keep them and their dependents in health.
Insurance by Industry is another idea on which many social workers and economists pin their faith. They argue that if each industry had to support its own unemployed, employers would be more chary of dismissing men, as they would be compelled to support them in any case. It is also alleged that the device would stimulate employers to increased enterprise im their efforts to provide work. Its opponents say that it is an exccTlent device to place the burden or unemployment on the backs of those least able to: bear it, and that under its operation some industries which are already badly hit would be killed altogether. The trade unions are about equally divided on the proposal. The more skilled craft unions are in -favour of it amd the financially weak and numerically strong labourer's unions are against it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.