l as of all those whose employment does not supply them with the means of a thoroughly sufficient and healthy existence, all the necessaries and comforts of life can be produced in our own country, just as they were produced down to a few centuries ago. I will now proceed to the exposition of the whole subject.

In order that those who have not read the Labour Party’s Unemployed Workmen Bill may understand why it could not have succeeded, a short statement of its essential provisions may here be given.

The first clause provides that the “Local Unemployment Authority” under this Bill shall be the council of every borough or district of over 20,000 inhabitants, and for the rest of the county the “County Council.” Clause 3 declares that “it shall be the duty of the Local Unemployment Authority to provide work for him” (any workman registered as unemployed) in connection with one or other of the “schemes” hereinafter provided, “or otherwise,” or failing the provision of work, “to provide maintenance, should necessity exist, for that person and for those depending on that person.”

This is the essential part of the clause, with a condition that the wages are to be “not lower than those that are standard to the work in the locality.”[3] Then there is to be a Central Unemployment Committee to “frame schemes,” and generally look after the Local Unemployment Committees, which are to be established by every local authority, and are also to “frame schemes”; and the “schemes” of the four or five hundred local authorities are all to be submitted to the Local Government Board for revisal or approval. Nowhere is any guide given to the essential principles which should underlie these hundreds of schemes, and we can easily imagine the del