Briefly, to sum it up, Labour, after four months in office, hae nothing to offer but a great extension of the payment of those doles it so vociferously denounced when the other parties were paying them. A year ago our present Labour Ministers described their payment instead of the provision of useful work as a tacit confession by the Unionist leaders of the bankruptey of th sstatesmancship. Their easy: aeceptance of the same extravagant R, dangerous way of slum problem has created among Labour workers in the various constituencies. Even the servile Labour press has lately been warning its Parliamentary leaders that the long promised scheme will soon have to be produced if the thousands of new converts to Labour are to bbe Kept loyal to the party.
The proposal to pay _uneniployment benefit to children between 14 and 16 created great indignation and Mr. Shaw was compelled to withdraw it. The other clauses will shortly be put into operation. 'There is nothing in them to which' great exception can be taken. If a man is genuinely seeking work and hho cannot find it, and no one can find it for him, there is no advantage in adding to "his humiliations by transferring him from the Labour Exchange to the Board of Guard-fans. And if workers are thrown out of work by the operation of trade disputes they have no connex-it is obviously unjust to'
them. The whole ease]
the additional benefits that paid for by the usual subscriptions is the fact that they repre-
The million unemployed can be! roughly divided up into three classes, The smallest are those who are! normally in regular work but who are occasionally out for a week or 30 between one job and another. The next largest class are casuals and unemployables who wor never in rogolar work but who have just managed to get the few stamps fon their cards that entitle them to sifed as workers "within the! meaning of the Act." The others and by far the largest urabe the incompetent, and the! The trad pression has now been 90 prolonged that employers and had, and taken, opportu! out all the men who cannot cop up the pace. Most of these are now ing into unemployables. Ma have not worked for two or thre: years, and with each succeeding year of idleness their chances of once more becoming producers instead of parasites grows steadily less, They are our pensioned reserve of labour for the next war.
A single man without any despot 'A mar-compelled to find resources as it is impossible to live on the benefit, even when the dependant's allowance is added to it, Those men who are enough to belong to a union whose rezourees are not yet all exhausted get their benefit supplemented by a small weekly grant supplement it by canvassing some trifling commodity from door to door. The unhappy rem: benefit from the unemployment benefits for, after queueing up at the Labour' Exchange for part of their week's allowance, they have to queue up once more before the Board of Coardians to ct the Mech Discnssed Nationslization.
It is generally believed that, the al Leaders of the Labour Party expected to form a governjority party. Tt is common knowledge that they had plans ready for the gradual nationalization of the coal and railways and the coal industry, to be put into operation when they had a majority over all other parties, Tt may be inferred that their expecta-ion of absorbing numbers of the employed was contingent on the Yet the policy of jog through national reconstruction schemes on an immense scale ix not inconsistent with the political professions of any purty in Pantiament. It is chiefly a question of brains, determination, and resource, No party could afford to oppose such schemes if a govern-tment set about then with foresight and common sense, For all its wre-on boasting: the present Labour nent is il-equipped for the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.