Commons Sitting of 20 June 1905

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
The House being met, and Mr. SPEAKER ELECT having taken the Chair
A Message to attend the Lords Commissioners was delivered by Black Rod.
Accordingly Mr. SPEAKER ELECT, with the House, went up to the House of Peers, where he was presented to the Lords Commissioners for the approbation of His Majesty.
Then the LORD CHANCELLOR, one of the said Commissioners, signified His Majesty's approbation of Mr. SPEAKER ELECT in the name and on behalf of His Majesty.
The House being returned—
Mr. SPEAKERreported, That the House had been to the House of Peers, where His Majesty was pleased by His Majesty's Commissioners to approve of the choice the House had made of him to be their Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: I take this opportunity of repeating my acknowledgments to the House for the honour which it has done me and the confidence which it has reposed in me, and of renewing the assurance of my entire devotion to the service of this House.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Shepton Mallet Gas Company (Electric Lighting) Bill [Lords]; Sandgate Urban District Council Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
Gas Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 246.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (No. 1) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill, without Amendment.
Birmingham Corporation, Bill, with Amendments.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend Section eighty-two of The Bills of Exchange Act, 1882." [Bills of Exchange Act, 1882, Amendment Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to extend Section eighty-six of The Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland), 1877." [Supreme Court of Judicature (Ireland) (No. 1) Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under The Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Aberystwyth Gas, Haslemere Gas, Hayling Island Gas, Sandiacre Gas, and Stanford-le-Hope Gas." [Gas Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords.]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the Shepton Mallet Gas Company to supply electricity within their limits of gas supply." [Shepton Mallet Gas Company (Electric Lighting) Bill [Lords.]
And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to provide for the licensing and control of hospitals for disease for the notification of tuberculosis; and to make other provisions for the health of the Sandgate
1080
urban district; and for other purposes." [Sandgate Urban District Council Bill [Lords.]

PETITIONS.
  BILLS OF EXCHANGE BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  COUNTY COURTS BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  FALSE STATEMENTS (COMPANIES) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Huddersfield; and Walsall; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSED PREMISES (HOURS OF CLOSING).
  Petition from Liverpool, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES (TAXATION AND PURCHASE OF LAND) BILL.
  Petition from Wandsworth, against; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES (TAXATION AND PURCHASE OF LAND) BILL.
  Petition from Woolwich, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCILS ASSOCIATION BILL.
  Petition from Wandsworth, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  MINISTRY OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  MUNICIPAL FRANCHISE (COMPANIES) BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  MORTGAGE OF PREMISES BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  POST OFFICE (TELEPHONE AGREE MENT).
  Petition from Grimsby, for annulment; to lie upon the Table.
  PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF MACHINERY BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  REGISTRATION OF FIRMS BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  STEAM ENGINES AND BOILERS (PERSONS IN CHARGE) BILL.
  Petition from Huddersfield, against; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE MARKS BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION ACT (1897) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Walsall, against; to lie upon the Table.

  PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS (WHITSUNTIDE RECESS).
  The following Papers, presented by Command of His Majesty during the Whitsuntide Recess, were delivered to the Librarian of the House of Commons during the Recess, pursuant to the Standing Order of the 14th August, 1896:—

  1. Trade Reports (Annual Series). Copies of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3398 to 3409.

  2. Treaty Series (No. 16, 1905). Copy of Convention between the United Kingdom and Switzerland supplementing Article XVIII. of the Treaty of Extradition of 26th November, 1880. Signed at London, 29th June, 1904.

  3. Sugar Convention (Commercial, No. 3, 1905). Copy of Report of British Delegate at the International Sugar Commission, Spring Session, 1905, and Correspondence.

  4. Colonial Reports (Annual). Copy of Colonial Report, No. 448 (St. Helena, Annual Report for 1904).

  1082

  5. Land Settlement Colonies. Copy of Report on the Salvation Army Colonies in the United States and at Hadleigh, England, with Scheme of National Land Settlement, by Commissioner H. Rider-Haggard.

  6. London Unemployed Fund. Copy of Preliminary Statement (as on the 14th April, 1905) prepared at the request of the President of the Local Government Board by the Central Executive Committee.

  7. Mercantile Marine (Sight Tests). Copy of Report to the Secretary of the Board of Trade upon the Sight Tests used in the Mercantile Marine for the year ended 31st December, 1904.

  8. Factories and Workshops. Copy of Report of the Chief Inspector for 1904. Part I. Reports.

  9. Historical Manuscripts (Royal Commission). Copy of Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont. Vol. I. Part. II.

  10. Meteorological Committee. Copy of Treasury Minute, dated 20th May, 1905, dealing with the constitution of the Meteorological Office.

  11. Board of Education. Copy of Regulations for the Training of Teachers and for the Examination of Students in Training Colleges.

  12. Churches (Scotland) Bill. Copy of Return of Extracts from Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland relating to the Church of Scotland passed in the years 1690, 1693, and 1707, showing the repeals in the Acts of 1693 and 1707 proposed by the Churches (Scotland) Bill.

  13. Sea Fisheries (Scotland). Copy of Report to the Secretary for Scotland of a Departmental Committee on the Sea. Fisheries of Sutherland and Caithness.

  14. Education (Scotland). Copy of Thirty-second Annual Report by the Accountant for Scotland to the Scotch Education Department.

  Ordered, That the said Papers do lie upon the Table.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  NAVY ESTIMATES. 1904–5 (STATEMENT ON PROGRAMME OF SHIPBUILDING, ETC.).
  Copy presented, of Statement showing probable, effect on the Programme of Shipbuilding, Reconstruction, Repairs Maintenance, etc., due to the Re-Appropriation of Cash Provision, etc [by Command]; to lie upon the Table and to be printed. [No. 195.]
  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL).
  Copy presented, of Colonial Report No. 449 (Falkland Islands, Annual Report for 1904) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  GRADUATED INCOME-TAX.
  Return presented, relative thereto [Address 11th August, 1904; Mr. Herbert Samuel]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 196.]
  LEAD POISONING IN EARTHENWARE AND CHINA WORKS.
  Return presented, relative thereto [Address 1st June; Mr. Cochrane]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 197.]
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY OF SURREY).
  Copy presented, of order made by the County Council of the County of Surrey, altering certain Polling Districts in the County [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  POLLING DISTRICTS (COUNTY BOROUOH OF NEWCASTLE-UPON- TYNE).
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Council of the County Borough of New-castle-upon-Tyne dividing certain Wards of the Borough into Polling Districts [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS (INCOR PORATION OF MERTHYR TYDFIL).
  Copy presented, of Charter of In-corporation of the Borough of Merthyr Tydfil, dated 6th June, 1905 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  IRISH LAND COMMISSION.
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 16th May; Mr. Delany]; to lie upon the Table.
  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Rule made by the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland appointing the places at which Examinations for 1905 shall be held [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Rule made by the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland determining the maximum number of Centre Superintendents to be appointed for the Examinations in 1905 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Rule made by the Intermediate Education Board for Ireland constituting an additional centre of Examination at Newtownbarry for 1905 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  BOARD OF EDUCATION.
  Copy presented, of Regulations for Evening Schools, Technical Institutions, and Schools of Art and Art Classes, from 1st August, 1905, to 31st July, 1906 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  INCOME-TAX (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  Copy presented, of Report of the Departmental Committee on Income-Tax, together with an Appendix and Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL.
  Copy presented, of Returns relating to the Council up to 31st March, 1905, with Estimate of Expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1906 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 198.]
  TRADE REPORTS.
  Copy presented, of Index to Reports of His Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Representatives Abroad on Trade and Subjects of General Interest (with Appendix), 1904 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.
  Copy presented, of Returns of Accidents and Casualties as reported to

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  the Board of Trade by the several Railway Companies in the United Kingdom during the three months ended 31st December, 1904, together with Reports of the Inspecting Officers of the Railway Department to the Board of Trade upon certain Accidents which wore inquired into. Part II., Reports on Accidents [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  EAST INDIA (ARMY ADMINIS TRATION).
  Copy presented, of Correspondence regarding the Administration of the Army in India [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3410 to 3413 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  NAVY (HYDROGRAPHER'S REPORT).
  Copy presented, of Report on Admiralty Surveys for the year 1904 by the Hydrographer [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  PAPERS LAID UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE.
  1. Inquiry into Charities (County of Wilts). Further Return relative thereto [ordered 9th August, 1901; Mr. Griffith Boscawen]; to be printed. [No. 199.]
  2. County Court Rules. Copy of County Court Rules, dated 7th June, 1905 [by Act].

  MR. SPEAKER'S RETIREMENT (KING'S ANSWER TO ADDRESS).
  Mr. A. J. BALFOURacquainted the House that their Address of Wednesday, the 7th day of this instant June, to His Majesty, praying His Majesty "that He will be most graciously pleased to confer some signal mark of His Royal Favour upon the right hon. William Court Gully, Speaker of this House, for his eminent services during the important period in
  1086
  which he has with such distinguished ability and dignity presided in the Chair of this House; and to assure His Majesty that whatever expense His Majesty may think proper to incur on that account this House will make good the same," has been presented to His Majesty; and His Majesty has been pleased to receive the same very graciously, and has commanded him to acquaint this House that His Majesty is desirous, in compliance with the wishes of His faithful Commons, to confer upon the said right hon. William Court Gully some signal mark of His Royal Favour; but, as the same cannot be effectually granted and secured without the concurrence of Parliament, His Majesty recommends to the House of Commons the adoption of such measures as may be necessary for the accomplishment of this purpose.
  Committee to consider His Majesty's Most Gracious Answer, To-morrow.— (Mr. A. J. Balfour.)

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  Public Accounts. That they give leave to Sir Henry Graham, Clerk of the Parliaments, to attend in order to his being examined as a witness before the Committee of Public Accounts.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Gambling in Futures, etc.—Instructions to Delegates at International Conference.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will say what instructions have been given to the delegates attending the International Congress to be held in Rome to raise the question of gambling in futures and options, especially in regard to foodstuffs.
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) I understand that no instructions were

  1087
  given to raise these questions. The hon. Member will find that the nature of the delegation was lately made plain by an Answer given by the President of the Board of Agriculture to the hon. Member for East Northamptonshire.

  The Aliens Bill.
  MR. MIDDLEMORE: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury when he expects that the Committee stage of the Aliens Bill will be proceeded with.
  (Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) I am afraid I am not in a position to fix the exact date for taking this stage of the Bill.

  Completion of Boat Slip at Glen, County Kerry.
  MR. BOLAND: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the inquiry into the proposed completion of the slip at Glen, county Kerry, has yet been held; and whether the work will now be proceeded with.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) No opportunity has yet arisen of making a further inspection of this boat slip. The question of carrying out additional works will be considered by the Board at their meeting next month, if in the meantime it should be found convenient to have an inspection made.

  Exports of Eggs, Butter, Creamery, Hogs, Cattle, and Oats from Canada to United Kingdom.
  MR. BRIGHT: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he can state the exports of eggs, butter, creamery, hogs, cattle, and oats from Canada to the United Kingdom for the first five months of this year as compared with the exports of the same period of last year.
  (Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) The value of the imports into the United
  1088
  Kingdom from Canada of the undermentioned articles during the first five months of 1904 and 1905 was as follows:—

  Five months ending May.

  1904.

  1905.

  £

  £

  Eggs.

  3,467

  7,350

  Butter

  51,069

  14,216

  Cheese

  876,155

  745,193

  Hogs

  Nil

  Nil

  Cattle

  579,621

  545,471

  Oats.

  62,570

  14,275

  Cutting of Hair of Mr. Joseph Fox in Durham Gaol.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the reason why Mr. Joseph Fox, of 18, Eldon Street, Darlington, who was recently confined in Durham Gaol for not having sent his children to school, was compelled to have his hair cut in spite of his protestations; and whether he would be willing to consider the question of giving him some compensation if the action of the gaol official was contrary to regulations.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) This prisoner's hair was cut by the ward officer as it was exceptionally long and hung to his shoulders. He made no objection at the time, but, on the contrary, asked to have his beard trimmed as well. Had he made any objection his hair would not have been cut except on a certificate from the medical officer of the prison that such cutting was necessary for the sake of health and cleanliness. As the prisoner's hair was cut for his own comfort and with his own consent, there can be no question of paying compensation to him.

  Charge of Felony against an East End Beerhouse Licensee.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the circumstances connected with a charge of felony brought by a firm of brewers against one of their tenants, the licensee of a beerhouse in the East End of London; whether he is aware that the licensee was prepared to plead guilty before the police magistrate but, at the request of the brewers, the case was adjourned to enable the licence to be transferred; that the licensing justices refused to transfer the licence until the charge of felony had been disposed of; that at the request of the brewers the charge of felony was reduced to a charge of unlawful receiving under the Police Acts; and that the licensee was convicted of and fined for that offence; and, if so, whether, seeing that the effect of the proceedings was to defeat the operation of the statutory provision which makes a licence void upon the licensee being convicted of felony, he proposes to take any, and, if any, what action in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) My attention was drawn to this case last year, and I duly considered it. It had been dealt with by the magistrate according to his discretion, with which I have no power to interfere, and there was no action for me to take in the matter.

  Suggested Increase of Maximum Wage for Darlington Postmen.
  MR. PIKE PEASE: To ask the Postmaster-General if he will take into consideration the question of raising the maximum wage paid in the post office at Darlington to postmen from the rate of 26s. per week to 28s. per week, on account of the fact that so many perform whole or part time indoor duties of which the major portion is night work.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) There are, I find, no sufficient grounds for raising the maximum pay of the Darlington postmen to 28s. per week.

  Conveyance of Afternoon Mails from Londonderry to England.
  DR. THOMPSON: To ask the Postmaster-General if he will explain why it is proposed to favour the conveyance of the afternoon mails from Londonderry to England by the four o'clock train via Larne and Stranraer, when the mails can be conveyed as expeditiously via Greenore by the express train leaving Londonderry at five o'clock; if he is aware that the additional hour's delay in Derry is considered an advantage by the merchants of this city; that the chamber of commerce and other public bodies have passed resolutions to this effect; and that the latter route is more convenient to traders in the counties of Donegal, Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan, Derry, and Armagh, whereas the route via Larne will benefit only a portion of Derry county and Antrim.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) I have considered the comparative merits of the two routes (via Larne and via Greenore respectively) for the mail service from the North of Ireland to England. By the improvement of the service by the Stranraer route, an acceleration of the correspondence for the northern and midland counties of England as well as that for London would be effected, whereas few places besides London would benefit by a despatch via Greenore. Under these circumstances, I consider that the interests of the public would be better served by an improvement in the time of despatch by the former route and have made arrangements accordingly. As regards the districts mentioned in the latter part of the Question, I should explain that in any case the expense of establishing direct bags to London from he smaller towns would not be warranted by the amount of correspondence available, but I am considering the question of extending as far as possible to those districts the benefits of the later despatch of the mails by the Stranraer route.

  Expenditure on Admiralty Buildings.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: To ask the hon. Member for Chorley, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, if he will state the entire amount which has been

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  expended on the Admiralty buildings (including all alterations of the old buildings, all expenditure on the new buildings, architects and surveyors and clerk of the works' fees) since the 1st January, 1887, down to the 31st January, 1905.

  £

  Alterations of the old buildings

  11514

  Expenditure upon the new buildings:—

  £

  Block I.

  167,472

  Block II.

  145,988

  Block III.

  62,059

  Mall extension

  21

  Covered way

  329

  375,869

  (including salaries of Clerks of Works)

  Commission to Architects and Surveyors

  13,169

  389,038

  £400,552

  The above expenditure is exclusive of £64,013 spent upon ordinary maintenance and repairs from 1st January, 1887, to 31st January, 1905.

  Risk of Communication of Glanders to Human Beings.
  MR. CHANNING: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that inquests recently held on a stableman in the Star Omnibus Company's stables, and on Elizabeth Cousins, the wife of a carman, in Pimlico, and a large number of fatal cases in London hospitals in the past two years have shown the increasing risk of glanders being communicated to human beings; and whether he will, in consultation with the Board of Agriculture, take steps by legislation or by administrative orders to deal with this danger.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I have seen reports of the inquests referred to; but I am not aware that there has been any large number of fatal cases of glanders in London hospitals in the last two years. The number of human deaths in London from this cause appears to have been four in 1903 and two in 1904.
  (Answered by Lord Balcarres.) The-expenditure defrayed by the Commissioners of His Majesty's Works, etc., on Admiralty buildings from 1st January, 1887, to 31st January, 1905, has been as follows:—
  I am advised that the risk of the disease being communicated from horses to man is not great, and that it does not seem to be increasing. But I think it may be desirable that when an inspector of the local authority, under the Diseases of Animals Acts, receives notice of the occurrence of a case of glanders in a horse he should forthwith give information of the receipt of the notice to the medical officer of the district in which the horse is or was, and I will communicate with my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries on the subject.

  Assessment of Licensed Premises.
  MR. LEIF JONES: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the difficulties of arriving at the values of licences under Clause 2, Section 2, of the Licensing Act, 1904, he will state whether it is the practice of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to base the valuation of licensed premises for the purpose of estate duty on the assessment of the licensed premises for the purpose of income-tax; or on the assessment for the publican's licence duty, and what number of years purchase of such assessment is

  1093
  usually taken for alehouse licences and for ante 1869 on beerhouse licences respectively, or the limits of variation in such number of years purchase in either case; or whether the Commissioners base their valuation on the average yearly takings in the licensed premises; in which case what is the profit assumed on the takings and the average number of years purchase usually taken for alehouse licences and for ante 1869 on beerhouse licences, or the limits of variation in such number of years purchase; or, if none of these bases are taken, whether he will state on what the practice of the Commissioners is based; and whether the Commissioners will publish a Paper showing six actual instances of recent valuations of licensed premises for purposes of estate duty, and explaining the method which was actually taken to arrive at such values.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) It would not be possible to give any general Answer to the above series of

  1899–1900.

  1900–1901.

  1901–1902.

  1902–1903.

  1903–1904.

  Number of defaulting ryots whose holdings were sold

  10,179

  14,760

  10,649

  7,756

  4,946

  Rs.

  Rs.

  Rs.

  Rs.

  Rs.

  Amount realized by sale

  191,814

  270,652

  152,433

  133,678

  97,129

  Sale of Salt in Indian Native States.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state the value of the salt sold annually to each Native State of India, with the population of each such State.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) If, as I presume, the Question has reference to the salt supplied in specified quantities and on privileged terms by the British Government to certain Native States under special treaty engagements, I will ask the Government of India to have such a Return prepared.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India, having regard to the
  Questions in any more precise form than that of the statement as to the Inland Revenue Procedure, which was published in House of Commons Paper, No. 155, of 1904. House of Commons Paper, No. 176, of 1890, may also be referred to. To give instances of recent valuations of licensed premises for purposes of estate duty would probably be only misleading, as so much must depend on the nature and amount of an interest passing o death and on the particular circumstance of each case.

  Evicted Ryots in the Madras Presidency.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state how many ryots have been evicted in the Madras Presidency in default of payment of land revenue in each of the last five years; and what sum has been realised in each year through the sale of land previously in the occupation of the evicted ryots.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.)
  fact that some of the Native States of India enjoy the right to purchase salt from the Government of India free of duty, whereas other Native States do not enjoy that privilege, will the question of conceding this right to all Native States be considered.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The right in question exists in virtue of special treaty engagements, as the hon. Member was informed in answer to his Questions of 16th December, † 1902, and 23rd March† last. It is not proposed to extend the concession to other States.
  † See (4) Debates, cxvi., 1331.
  † See (4) Debates, cxliii., 939.

  Sales of Irish Land—Trinity College Leases.
  MR. LONSDALE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he pro poses to introduce legislation this session to give effect to the recommendations of the Trinity College, Dublin, Estates Commission, and particularly recommendation number 5, to enable lessees holding under leases originally made for terms of ninety-nine years under the Trinity College, Dublin, Leasing and Perpetuity Act, 1851, to sell as immediate landlords under the Land Purchase Acts in the same manner as if not less than sixty years of the said terms were un-expired.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The Report of the Commission deals with a number of very difficult and complicated questions which require, and will receive, the most careful consideration of the Government. I cannot, at present, give any undertaking to introduce legislation.

  Drogheda Plague Inspections—Claim of Dr. O'Keefe.
  MR. NOLAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Local Government Board issued certain temporary regulations respecting plague to the Louth District Council, Drogheda Union, commencing 1st October, 1900, and that Dr. O'Keefe was employed to carry out these orders, who furnished an account for £21 for performing the duties connected with same; and, seeing that the Local Government Board declined to sanction the payment of this amount, and that Dr. O'Keefe took legal proceedings for recovery and obtained a decree with costs, whether the Local Government Board will now make an order apportioning the respective amounts to be paid under this decree by each of the sanitary authorities affected—viz., Ardee No. 1 R.D.C., Louth (Drogheda Union) R.D.C., Meath (Drogheda Union) R.D.C., and Drogheda U.D.C.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The temporary regulations referred to were revoked on the 12th November, 1900. Dr. O'Keefe claimed £21 for twenty-one inspections made between the 14th Febru-
  1096
  ary, 1901, and the 9th February, 1903. Thirteen of these inspections were made prior to the 1st November, 1901, when no such regulations were in force, and when, therefore, he was not required to inspect vessels from home ports. The regulations were again issued on the last-mentioned date, and were continued in force for a period of six months, during which time he made four inspections. These were the only inspections in respect of which the Board could legally sanction payment, or apportion the cost on the other contributory districts in the Port of Drogheda. The remaining four inspections were made after the expiration of the six months, when there were no special regulations in force. The Louth Rural District Council failed to defend the process in respect of charges for which there was no legal warranty, and they now seek to have the amount of the decree, given through their default, apportioned on the other sanitary districts abutting on the Port of Drogheda, but in the circumstances there is no power to make such apportionment.

  Close Time for Irish Fisheries.
  COLONEL MCCALMONT: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the reply of the Fisheries Department (Ireland) to the request of the Conservators of the Coleraine district, to the effect that no alteration in the close time could be made without legislation; whether any alteration has been made in the law since the present close season was fixed; and whether measures can be taken for the proper preservation of districts by having a general close time proclaimed through them.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The Coleraine Board of Conservators approached the Department with a view to a change of close season in their district. The clerk to the board was informed on the 23rd February last that the action of the Irish Fishery Authority in charging all the expenses of a charge of close season under 5 and 6 Vic., c. 106, sec. 33, to the Parliamentary Vote instead of to applicants for such changes was questioned in Parliament in the year 1895, and that in view of the possibility that such action

  1097
  should be held to be ultra vires, and of the fact that it had been found in practice to be impossible to carry out the provisions of the section exactly, the holding of close season inquiries had been suspended until a favourable opportunity presented itself in Parliament for introducing legislation to meet the difficulties of the case. On the 13th March last, the clerk was informed that the Department were not prepared to hold the close season inquiry asked for. The provisions of Section 33 above referred to have never been looked upon as workable. It would be undesirable that the same close season should be in force in every part of each district.

  Grazing Lands on Lord Trimlestown's Farm, County Roscommon.
  MR. HAYDEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether Lord Trimlestown offered a large farm of 170 acres in the county of Roscommon to the Estates Commissioners for sale; whether the Commissioners purchased the entire of said farm; and, if so, whether, seeing that a list of suitable occupiers was duly forwarded to the Commissioners, any portion of this farm has been, or will be, given to graziers.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) Certain lands have been offered for sale to the Estates Commissioners by Lord Trimlestown, and the Commissioners have ordered an inspection of the lands with a view to considering the question of purchase and re-sale.

  Ardee Union Dispensary Districts.
  MR. NOLAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has yet seen his way to ask the Local Government Board (Ireland) to modify their instruction, under sealed order, suppressing one of the dispensary districts in the Ardee Union; whether his attention has been drawn to the fatal accidents which recently occurred at Collon, in which the victims died without relief owing to the removal of the medical officer from the village; is he aware that a special messenger had to be sent by car for a doctor in each case; and whether he
  1098
  can state to what account the extra expenditure is to be charged.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) The Answer to the first inquiry is in the negative. The Board are only aware of one recent fatal accident at Collon, and in that case, according to the statement of the coroner's jury, the dispensary medical officer attended promptly. Expenditure incurred on car hire in summoning medical officers cannot be defrayed out of the local rates unless it has been authorised by the relieving officer.

  Militia and Volunteer Submarine Mining Divisions.
  MR. KEARLEY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, having regard to his recent statements as to the future existence of the Militia and Volunteer Submarine Mining Divisions, he will state whether it is now the intention to dispense with them or retain them for service, in whole or in part; if in part, at which ports is it decided to continue their establishment and recruiting, and at which are they to be abolished.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) No submarine miners will be retained by the Army for submarine mining purposes at any of the naval ports. The question whether these forces can be utilised in connection with the defence of the waterways of commercial ports is still under consideration.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    International Labour Conference and the Match Trade.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, at the recent International Labour Conference, the delegates of His Majesty's Government abstained from assenting to both of the two propositions agreed to, or whether their dissent was confined to the proposals as to interdiction of the use of white or yellow phosphorus to the match trade, agreed to by Germany, France, and

    1099
    most of the other Powers represented, and made conditional on the assent of all, and on that of Japan; and whether any further steps are contemplated by His Majesty's Government as to the five Articles of the Convention on the industrial employment of women in nigh work.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS DOUGLAS,): In accordance with the instructions given them, the delegates of this country abstained from voting on either of the resolution when finally put to the vote of the Conference. As regards the employment of women at night, I understand that the restrictions proposed by the Conference fall short of those already imposed by the English law. The final Report however, of the proceedings of the Conference has not yet been received, and until I have had an opportunity of considering it I shall not be in a position to make any statement as to the attitude of His Majesty's Government toward the proposals adopted at the Conference.
    SIR CHARLES DILKEgave notice that he would call attention to the subject on the Home Office Vote.

    Medical and Dentists' Register.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State of the Home Department, having regard to the fact that during recent years twenty names have been struck off the Medical Register by the General Medical Council for infamous conduct in a professional respect, and twelve restored, whilst out of six names removed from the Dentists' Register for a similar cause one has been restored, will he state whether any of those whose names have been restored were originally charged with adultery; and, if any, how many.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: The Answer is "None."
    MR. WEIR: Did the right hon. Gentleman obtain his information from the Medical Council? In some cases I
    1100
    shall be prepared to quote to show he is wrong.
    MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: I shall be very glad to receive any information the hon. Member may have but I have given him the information I have received.

    County Court Judgeships.
    MR. BRYNMOR JONES: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what has been the amount of the saving to the Exchequer effected annually in the salaries and pensions of the Judges of the County Courts by the absorption of Circuits 10, 34, 39, and 56, since 1872, and of Circuit 46 since 1893; what has been the amount of the saving to the Exchequer effected annually by the abolition, in 1869, of the country d strict Courts of Bankruptcy and the transfer of the business of that department to the County Courts; whether any remuneration has been given to the Judges of the County Courts in respect of the additional labour and responsibility so imposed on them; what has been the average net annual cost of the whole County Court establishment, including the bankruptcy administration, for the last twenty years, apart from the salaries and pensions of the Judges; and whether any effect has been given to the recommendation of a Select Committee of this House in 1878, that the salaries of the Judges of County Courts should be uniformly raised to £2,000 per annum.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH, Derbyshire, W.): The saving in salaries has been £1,500 a year for each of the five circuits absorbed. The saving in pensions can only be conjectured, as it depends on the number of Judges who would have retired since the absorption took place, but I think that £1,000 a year would not be on unreasonable estimate. I regret that I cannot state whether any, and, if so, what saving has been effected by the transfer to the County Courts of the work of the country district Courts of Bankruptcy. Such transfer has led to a large increase in the remuneration of the County Court Registrars, but it is not possible to say what the expenditure would have been, during the whole period since 1869, if

    1101
    the transfer had not been effected. No increased remuneration in consequence of this transfer has been given to County Court Judges, but their salaries had been raised from £1,200 to £1,500 a few years before, i.e., in 1865. The average annual cost of the County Court establishment, apart from the salaries and pensions of the Judges, during the last twenty years, was £59,272. Effect has not been given to the recommendation in favour of an increase of the salaries of the Judges, but the County Courts (No. 2) Bill now before Parliament provides for an increase of the salaries of a certain number of Judges, on certain conditions, from £1,500 to £1,800.

    Moray Firth Fisheries.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate if he will state whether, in view of the continued evasion of Fishery Board by-laws by British-owned trawlers sailing under a foreign flag, the Secretary for Scotland has yet come to a decision with other Government Departments in regard to the recommendation of the Fishery Board that all ports of the United Kingdom should be closed against the landing of fish caught by trawlers in the Moray Firth.
    THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON, Glasgow, Bridgton): After communication with other Departments concerned, the Secretary for Scotland is satisfied that legislation in the sense referred to is not at present practicable.

    Caithness Crofter's Grievance.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate whether he is aware that Mr. William Bremner, tenant of a croft at Watten, Caithness, on the estate of Sir Ralph Anstruther, was recently evicted without compensation; and, seeing that the whole cost of the improvements and repairs on the holding have been borne by Mr. Bremner or his family, who have been in the occupation of the croft for many years, will he state whether the question of compensation has been considered by the Crofters Commission.
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: A question was raised as to whether Mr. Bremner was a crofter or not, but the question of compensation in this case could not be
    1102
    considered by the Crofters Commission, because Mr. Bremner withdrew his application on his own motion.

    Loans to Scottish Fishermen.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland has yet considered the desirability of making loans to fishermen in congested districts for the purchase of boats and gear.
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: The matter referred to by the hon. Member is dealt with in the Report of Lord Mansfield's Committee, which has been laid on the Table of the House. The question is engaging the attention of the Secretary for Scotland.

    The Military Stores Report.
    MR. WHITLEY: I have given private notice of a Question on this subject to the Secretary for War. A few moments ago I received a note from the right hon. Gentleman asking that the Question should be postponed till to-morrow, but I think that postponement need only apply to the third part of the Question, which asks what are the intentions of the Department with regard to further investigation. The first two parts of the Question relate to pure matters of fact, which must have been long within the knowledge of the Department. Therefore, I now ask the first two Questions, whether there are any contracts at present in force between the military authorities in South Africa and Meyer (Limited) or Wilson & Worthington, and on whose authority the Press censor in South Africa prevented the publication of criticisms on the contracts for sales and supplies.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER, Belfast, W.): The general Question should be addressed to my right hon. friend the Leader of the House. The other two Questions I ask the hon. Gentleman to postpone till to-morrow. [OPPOSITION cries of "Why?"] I only received them yesterday evening. I have no objection to answering them if the hon. Member will give me the ordinary notice. As I said, I only received the Questions

    1103
    last night, and I asked the hon. Member to postpone them, which I thought to had done. I can give an Answer to the first Question now. There are no contracts with this firm. [AN HON. MEMBER: Two firms.] Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to postpone the Answer to the other Question until to-morrow.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury three Questions, of which, for greater accuracy, I have provided myself with a copy. First, whether any punitive steps have been taken in the case of any officer or other person concerned in the transactions referred to Sir William Butler's Committee; secondly, what judicial action has been taken by His Majesty's Government with a view to the investigation of the whole subject of the dealings in military stores in South Africa or any part of that subject; and, thirdly, what opportunity the right hon. Gentleman proposes to afford the House of a discussion on this matter.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): We placed the papers in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions as soon as we had them. He informs us that in those papers there does not appear to be any case for criminal action; that further investigation may produce evidence which would justify criminal action, but such evidence does not appear in the papers of which we are in possession. The censured officers have been relieved from duty. On the whole, I am disposed to think it would not be desirable to try them by way of Court-martial until a further investigation has taken place, and what form that investigation should take must be a matter on which I hope the House will allow me a few more hours for consideration, and an opportunity of consulting with my colleagues. We are only just met, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, after the holidays. There is a Cabinet to-morrow, and I shall be able to give a definite Answer at Question time. My own impression, I may say, distinctly is that we should more quickly—I will not suggest get at the bottom of
    1104
    the matter—but more quickly see what further steps should be taken if the matter is at once placed in the hands of a Committee of this House. All the officers incriminated are, I believe, in England, and they could be examined before a Committee of this House. Of course the proceedings could be open. I do not want this to be taken as a final Answer, but I believe myself that would be the most expeditious method of procedure and the most satisfactory to the House, who, I think, would like to be brought face to face with the scandals exposed by the Butler Departmental Committee. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will renew his Question tomorrow, when I shall be able to answer with more authority.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I think it is reasonable that the right hon. Gentleman should have twenty-four hours more for consideration, but let me point out that the course of appointing a Committee was urged on the Government six weeks ago by my hon. friend behind me the Member for Huddersfield (Sir J. Woodhouse) and refused. Further, I would ask particularly as to the first of my series of Questions. The right hon. Gentleman says that the officers who have been censured have been dealt with in a certain way; but we understood that he whole question was still sub judice, and that it was beyond the limits of propriety for any individual, and especially any newspaper, to pronounce an opinion on the conduct of any of the officers concerned. But the right hon. Gentleman appears, or those under him appear, to have already censured certain officers, notwithstanding that there has not been a complete inquiry.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman appears to be under a misapprehension. Perhaps the word "censured" was not felicitously chosen What I want the House to understand is that certain officers have been severely criticised in the Report. Those officers have been relieved of duty. That is all I meant. With regard to the other Question which the right hon. Gentleman put to me, I had forgotten that the hon. Gentleman opposite had asked for a

    1105
    Committee six weeks ago; I do not think he did actually ask that.
    SIR JAMES WOODHOUSE: Yes.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It escaped my memory at any rate; but in any case it would surely have been premature then. Surely we had to wait until the Report was in the hands of the Government and of the House.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE (Carnarvon): I understood the Prime Minister to say that he had taken steps with regard to certain officers. May I ask whether he has considered whether any steps ought to be taken with regard to the members of the Government responsible?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: What I said was that we had laid the papers in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and that he had reported that as far as he could judge from those papers there is no case for a criminal prosecution. I do not know whether the hon. Member suggests that any member of the Government is open to criminal prosecution.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I still ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has made any inquiry as to the responsibility of those members of the Government who are at the head of this Department and who are responsible to the House and to the country for the whole of these blunders.
    [No Answer was returned.]
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The Report was printed, published, and circulated with a most remarkable preface by the Secretary of State for War, in which he warned all the world that this was an incomplete and partial inquiry, that the evidence had not been taken on oath, and that for many other reasons it was undesirable that people should discuss it or pronounce an opinion on the conduct of any one concerned. He used the term sub judice. I should like to hear from the Prime Minister how he justifies that preface to the Report, and what the circumstances are on which that preface may be supposed to be founded.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Perhaps I can explain the matter to the House. The circumstances are these. The Report was one of a Departmental Committee which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been concluded and furnished to the head of the Department. The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons was sitting concurrently and contemporaneously with the Departmental Committee, and they desired that an interim Report of the Departmental Committee should be furnished to them on six specific cases before the whole of the inquiry had been concluded. That Report was presented and is incomplete, and is stated to be so by the Committee.
    SIR JAMES WOODHOUSE: Not incomplete as to the six cases.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: It is perfectly obvious that a great many persons are concerned in these transactions, and they have a right to be heard, and I believe it is in consonance with the sense of justice of the whole House that such an observation should be made. I wanted to explain that this Report, in so, far as it concerns the reputation and honour of a number of individuals, is not complete, and that they have not had the opportunity which we desire they should have of stating their case. It was for that reason that I stated, as is the fact, that the inquiry is incomplete. I cannot imagine that any cause could be injured by that statement, and I am certain the cause of fairness will be served by it.
    MR. JOHN MORLEY: Why, then, may I ask, have these officers been relieved of their duties?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I can explain that very simply. We have a Departmental Report which tends to throw suspicion, and more than suspicion, on a number of officers who were discharging duties connected with the administration of public funds. We have thought it reasonable, pending further inquiry, which we think necessary, that these officers should be relieved of their duties. We have pronounced no censure and inflicted no penalty on these officers. We shall be most careful to do neither until these

    1107
    officers have had full opportunity of being tried by whatever tribunal is appointed to try them.
    An HON. MEMBER on the OPPOSITION side: More hanging up.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I do not know whether the hon. Member proposes that we should punish them without trial. We have done what we believe to be in the public interest.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: At the risk of the appearance of pertinacity, may I ask what is the position of a Select Committee of this House, if appointed? Will it be appointed to examine this case, which has already been incompletely and partially examined? Is the Report of General Butler's Committee to be submitted to the Select Committee, or is the Select Committee to take the place of the Departmental Committee and continue the inquiry in its stead?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I should be glad to leave it to the Select Committee to take the course it may think most desirable, and I shall have no desire to restrict the reference to that Committee. But I think if the reference is made very wide, we should put in words to provide, as far as possible, that they should make an interim Report. All I am anxious for is that the thing should not be hung up under the guise of inquiry. On the other hand, I think it is quite clear that there must be an inquiry.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman will give a more explicit answer to-morrow?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes.
    MR. BLAKE: Will it be possible to have such an exhaustive inquiry as is necessary in the public interest without bringing witnesses from South Africa or examining them there?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think it is possible that the Committee will find that, if they want to get at the contractors in South Africa, the machinery
    1108
    of a Parliamentary Committee may be insufficient. But the machinery will certainly be sufficient to examine the officers who are primarily responsible, and I think we should be guided by the Committee as to what further steps should be taken and as to whether it is desirable to see if they could not get the Attorney-General or Director of Public Prosecutions in South Africa to say whether or not there is material for prosecution there. But from such information as has reached me I do not think that that is practicable.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: May I ask whether, in addition to the officers named by the Butler Committee who have been relieved from duty, the Government has also relieved from duty the officer who is responsible for all of them?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir. I have explained to the House exactly the position.
    MR. TENNANT: Will the right hon. Gentleman, before he answers to-morrow, recollect that my right hon. friend asked him a three-headed Question, the last part of which had reference to the question of an opportunity for discussion. Will he consider what course he will take, in view of the fact that the hon. Member for Sheffield has a Motion on the Paper?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, Sir; I shall be glad to consider such a question; but I hope the House will remember that a debate before we have an inquiry would be rather putting the cart before the horse. What I desire is that there should be an inquiry by a House of Commons Committee, conducted as regards the leading points of the case with sufficient expedition to enable us to debate the subject in the House on adequate information, which I think it is admitted on all sides we have not got at present.
    SIR JAMES WOODHOUSE: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the possible difficulty which he may have in obtaining the evidence in South Africa

    1109
    which may be necessary to complete the Report?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have by implication answered that Question. The military witnesses are in this country and can give such information as may be necessary for the immediate inquiry.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: What does the Secretary of State for War mean by an interim Report? Does he mean that the Butler Committee is still sitting and is expected to make a further Report?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: That must depend on what is resolved upon by the House of Commons. It would be obviously undesirable to continue its proceedings if any other form of inquiry were embarked upon. In the ordinary course it would have been proper to carry on this Committee to the end. I believe the form of inquiry suggested by the Prime Minister would be much more satisfactory. It would be a comprehensive inquiry, and would give, what the Butler Committee has not given, an opportunity to the persons concerned to cross-examine with regard to the charges made against them.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: But what does the right hon. Gentleman mean by describing the Report as an interim Report? Is not this the final Report as far as the Committee is concerned?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: No, Sir; that Report was made at my instance—originally at the instance of the Public Accounts Committee. The Public Accounts Committee desired to have a Report from the Committee before they concluded their labours on the branch of the subject which they were investigating. If it had not been for that desire, the Committee would have been sitting now and would have postponed its Report till the whole of the evidence had been received.
    MR. DALZIEL: Has the right hon. Gentleman taken it into consideration that it will be almost impossible to report before the end of the session, and that therefore the matter will have to go over till next year?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is very much more expeditious than any other form of inquiry.
    MR. WHITLEY: Will the Prime Minister bear in mind, in considering any inquiry, that it is really the War Office and not the officers who are arraigned by this Report?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. No doubt the organisation dealing with these great contracts was the old organisation. There is now a new organisation, which I hope and believe, in the unfortunate event of a great war again, will be able to deal satisfactorily with these matters. The old organisation was imperfectly adapted to deal with them; but that does not mean that the War Office is arraigned. Those who are arraigned are those who are alleged rightly or wrongly to have been guilty of something which amounts to fraud.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: Is it suggested that the War Office ought not to be expected to exercise a general supervision over matters involving six or seven millions of money?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Of course it should. What I said was that the machinery for the supervision that existed up to a very recent time has prove, under the strain of the largest land war which we have ever conducted, to be imperfect.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: This was after the war was over.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The machinery in operation was the ancient and traditional machinery, which was imperfect. It was inadequate. It has been changed. What the question before the House now is, as I understand it, is another question involving a suggestion of fraud.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: What I asked the Prime Minister on that point—a truly important point for the House of Commons—was whether the right hon. Gentleman is satisfied that the machinery, imperfect as it was, was properly handled by the men who were in charge of it at

    1111
    the War Office. Will lie inquire into that?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That may be a very proper question for the Committee to inquire into.
    MR. CROOKS: I wish to ask whether, having regard to the public feeling in this matter, a Select Committee, if appointed, will report, say, within six months; and whether it will be within the purview of this particular Committee to impeach Ministers.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Ministers cannot be impeached except on a vote of the Houses of Parliament.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: There is a blocking notice which would prevent that.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: However deserved an impeachment might be, the machinery for carrying it into effect is rather clumsy and antiquated. I hope the Report for our guidance will be given not within six months, but long before the present session terminates.
    MR. JOHN MORLEY: I should like to ask the Secretary of State for War a Question on the point raised by my hon. friend the Member for Carnarvon. It appears that a financial agent for the War Office visited South Africa twice or three times, and it would ease the public mind, independently of any action taken in the direction of appointing a Select Committee, if the reports made by that financial agent of the War Office were made public.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Does the right hon. Gentleman ask me a specific Question on that?
    MR. JOHN MORLEY: Yes.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I do not know what the exact form of these reports may be; but I am most anxious that all the details shall be laid before the House, and if the reports could in the ordinary course be laid, I should be desirous to put them before the House. But all the reports were laid before the
    1112
    Committee itself, and the gentleman to whom the right hon. Gentleman refers was himself examined at great length by Sir William Butler's Committee, and it will be obvious that nothing he has brought back from South Africa by way of information or report has been withheld in the inquiry into this matter.
    MR. JOHN MORLEY: I did not mean to charge the right hon. Gentleman for a moment with withholding anything that he thought might be useful in the inquiry; but it would be of great interest to all of us if we knew what view was taken at the War Office by their own officer who twice or three times visited South Africa and investigated these transactions.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there will be no reluctance on my part to give any information that can be given; but it would be better if this matter were gone into as a whole. I will inquire whether these reports are in such a form that they can be produced, but I think it would probably be seen that all the particulars from his documents were furnished with reference to the whole transaction. I will endeavour to do everything necessary to inform the House.
    MR. BRYNMOR JONES: I should like to ask whether the stores operations dealt with in the Report of the Butler Committee were carried out by a new department appointed jointly by the War Office and by Lord Kitchener.
    MR. LOUGH: Will the Prime Minister tell us to-morrow what Cabinet Minister is responsible for the authorisation of sales and making of contracts in South Africa?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not suppose it is possible for any Cabinet Minister to look into the details of contracts.
    MR. LOUGH (interrupting): I do not refer to details, but to the extraordinary principle of making sales and contracts in South Africa. What Cabinet Minister is responsible for authorising them?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am not quite sure that I understand the hon. Gentleman's Question. If he means what Department has got to deal with these matters, it is, of course, the War Office; and I presume the head of the War Office is responsible for the contracts in the same way as Mr. Gladstone's Secretary for War was responsible for the bent bayonets at Abu Klea.
    MR. BRYNMOR JONESrepeated his Question whether the Department conducting the stores operations was entirely a new one.
    MR. A. J. BALKOUR: I think if the hon. Gentleman wants to ask me Questions about the details of War Office arrangements he had better give me notice.

    The "St. Kilda."
    MR. CHARLES Mc ARTHUR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the report of the sinking of the British steamer "St. Kilda" by a Russian cruiser is substantially correct; what action has been taken by His Majesty's Government on behalf of the owners of the ship and cargo; and what is the present position of the master and officers?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In answer to my hon. friend I have to say that I fear it is true that the ship to which he refers has been sunk by a Russian cruiser. It would be unnecessary to inform my hon. friend that we took immediate steps in the matter. A correspondence is now going on between us and the Russian Government, of which I should be reluctant to speak at the present moment, because it is not concluded. My hon. friend will realise that His Majesty's Government take a very grave view of the matter, because it is not denied in any quarter that we had received a most specific assurance that no such action would be taken in the future by Russian cruisers.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: May I ask whether His Majesty's Government have now received any satisfaction from the Russian Government as to a similar act, the sinking of the "Knight Commander,"
    1114
    which the right hon. Gentleman himself characterised as a gross outrage; and whether they pressed for satisfaction in respect of that outrage? If not, it is perhaps due to that that this second outrage has occurred.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not think the second outrage has any relation to the first, except that the action taken by His Majesty's Government was intended to prevent the frequent repetition of these breaches of international law. If my hon. friend will put a Question to-morrow as to the matter of fact I will endeavour to answer it.

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: There appears to be some misunderstanding about the business for to-morrow. Can the right hon. Gentleman make any statement on the point?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: After consideration of His Majesty's gracious message respecting the late Speaker, the great bulk of the time will, I have no doubt, be occupied by the Indian Budget.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: And on Friday?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: On Friday the Consolidated Fund Bill will be taken.

  UNEMPLOYED WORKMEN BILL.
  [SECOND READING.]
  Order for Second Reading road.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR, Leeds, Central)said the Bill of which he now had to move the Second Reading was introduced under what was known as the "ten minutes" rule in deference to a strong desire among Members on the Opposition side of the House to become acquainted with its provisions at the earliest possible moment. It was not the procedure he would have preferred, because it did not admit of adequate explanation and defence of a measure of the kind, and without such

  1115
  explanation prejudices were apt to take root and flourish, which possibly in the light of fuller discussion at the outset might never have been formed at all. A Bill like this was apt to be attacked on the one side because it went too far, and on the other side for not going far enough, and the present Bill was no exception to the rule. His hon. friend the Member for North Islington, as he gathered from the terms of the notice given, would regard the passing of the Bill as little short of a national calamity, and on the other hand he had received representations pressing him to introduce into the Bill Amendments for transferring to boards of guardians the powers proposed to be vested in the local and central authorities, empowering guardians to draw to an unlimited extent on the rates for giving employment without disfranchisement and at full trade-union wages, and finally throwing on the Imperial Exchequer the obligation to defray two-thirds or three-fourths of the expense so incurred. He hoped before he sat down to meet the objections of his hon. friend the Member for North Islington but first he would deal with the second class of objectors, for he thought they had entirely misconceived the real scope and intention of the measure and the significance of the limitations, without which, in the opinion of the Government, a measure of the kind could not possibly be successful.
  The present Bill did not pretend to deal with the whole of the vast and complicated problem known as the "unemployed question," it did not attempt to do more than deal with a part, not altogether an unimportant part, but only a part of that problem, and any attempt to extend its principle to the whole field of unemployment would be foredoomed to disastrous failure. Anybody reading the text of the Bill with attention would see that the object throughout was to assist only a limited class of the unemployed, and even as regarded applicants of that class it was not intended that there should be any kind of obligation to find work for them, as was thrown on guardians to provide relief in cases of destitution. The limited class of the unemployed was defined in Sub-section 3 of Section 1 of the Bill as—
  "Honestly desirous of obtaining work but temporarily unable to do so from exceptional
  1116
  causes over which the applicant has no control."
  And the limitation was extended to cases which, in the opinion of the local body to whom application is made, are—
  "Capable of more suitable treatment under this Act than under the Poor Law."
  He wanted the House to understand the full significance of the definition—the desire was to exclude loafers, work-shyers, intermittent workers whose case was not exceptional, and any workman out of work from fault of his own. The exact interpretation of the words—
  "Capable of more suitable treatment than under the Poor Law"
  would, of course, depend on the general provisions of the Bill and the regulations to be made by the Local Government Board under Clause 4, and such regulations would include rules his right hon. friend the Member for South Bristol had laid down for the guidance of local and central committees, rules which would exclude distress not due to lack of employment, chronic distress, applicants of bad character, applicants not complying with conditions of residence, preference being given to workmen with esatblished homes and with wives and families. These cases would be dealt with in the regulations, but in addition the Bill contained two general directions which would be found in Sub-section 5 of Section 1. It was there provided that—
  "The total weekly remuneration given for any temporary work so provided shall be less than that which would, under ordinary circumstances, be earned by an unskilled labourer for a full week's work."
  And, secondly—
  "Except with the consent of the Local Government Board, temporary work shall not be so provided for the same person in more than two successive years."
  The first principle laid down in the proviso was not concerned with the question whether or not a given applicant was a fit person to be assisted under the Act. On that important point he would have a word or two to say later on. It did not refer directly to the character of the applicant. But the second was clearly intended to indicate that the relief of recurrent distress was not contemplated by the Bill, and that the unemployed for whom the Bill was intended were respectable workmen settled

  1117
  in a locality, hitherto accustomed to regular work, but temporarily out of employment through circumstances beyond their control, capable workmen with hope of return to regular work after hiding over a period of temporary distress. His meaning would be made more clear by reference to Mr. Charles Booth's classification of the inhabitants of the poorer districts of London:—A, the lowest, roughly corresponding to those who were hopelessly unemployed; B, those who were casually employed; C, those with intermittent employment; D, regular workers at low wages; and E, regular workers at standard rates of payment. The unemployed specially contemplated in the Bill were those who would be classed under D and E; it was not intended that work should be provided for classes A and B or generally for class C. A and B and the majority of class C would be regarded, in the language of the Bill, as persons more suitable for Poor Law treatment. Whether the present Poor Law organisation was adequate to deal with A, B, and the greater part of C was no doubt open to question, but the Bill made no claim to deal with the question of the unemployed as a whole, it attacked the problem only from above, leaving for future consideration the question whether any fresh measures should be devised for dealing with it from below. It would be safe, however, to say that, if treated by such methods from above and by more drastic treatment of the classes A and B, undoubtedly the task of Poor Law guardians would be greatly facilitated for dealing with the intermediate class.
  He now passed to the objections which he gathered his hon. friend the Member for North Islington had to the Bill. His hon. friend's Amendment condemned the present proposals as—
  "Contrary to the best interests of the State and especially detrimental to the poor themselves"
  These were strong words, and in replying by anticipation he would state what he conceived to be the principle of the Bill in his own language. It was true the Bill for the first time would give statutory recognition to a system of giving employment relief by public
  1118
  authorities unencumbered by the disability attaching to Poor Law administration. It was also true that it professed to create and maintain machinery for organising such employment and, to a limited extent, providing employment relief at the expense of the rates, and that this machinery was to be outside the Poor Law. These were undoubtedly important innovations, but he thought that, at all events as regarded the first of them, the innovation was more apparent than real. For at least twenty years local authorities had been giving employment relief without disfranchisement at the expense of the rates. On this point he thought it would be well that they should rid themselves of all illusions. When a local authority put in hand a public work and engaged on that work persons who avowedly were unfamiliar with that work, simply because they were unemployed, the local authority was undoubtedly giving relief, and giving it at the expense of the rates, to the extent to which the cost of the labour actually employed exceeded the cost at which the labour could have been provided by a contractor. If the work was useless, it was clear that the entire sum so spent by the local authority was spent in relief. He had no doubt that in the last twenty years there had been a considerable expenditure by public authorities on works of a useless as well as a costly character. For the purposes of his present argument he would not raise the question of useless works. He was content to assume that the work put in hand by the local authorities had simply been expedited, and that, sooner or later, it would in any case have been undertaken. But let them look at what had been done during the past winter.
  According to a Return that had been presented to the House at the instance of his hon. friend the Member for Chelsea, a sum of something over £111,000 was spent during last winter by the Metropolitan authorities on work undertaken specially for finding work for unemployed workmen. It was not easy to calculate what that work would have cost had it been performed under ordinary circumstances, but he thought they would make a fairly generous estimate

  1119
  if they put the value of the work done, calculated in wages, at a little over £80,000. That meant that during last winter £30,000 was spent by the Metropolitan authorities in providing relief for the unemployed, and almost all of that sum which was not paid by his right hon. friend's central committee was paid out of the rates. The figures in regard to the provinces were not so complete, but, from a Return made by eighty-nine of the largest towns in the United Kingdom, it appeared that during the month of January, in seventy-four out of these eighty-nine places the local authority gave relief employment, and the men employed at one time or another during the month of January in the provinces numbered about 21,000. In London, during the same month, 20,000 or 21,000 men were employed; therefore, in the course of January, the local authorities were employing, without disfranchisement and at the expense of the rates, about 41,000 men. His information as to the cost of the work in the provinces was meagre, but it appeared that in five towns alone—Manchester, Salford, Leeds, Bradford, and Sheffield— about £36,000 was spent on employment of this kind from the end of the autumn to the end of the first week in March. Not only had it become a practically universal practice for local authorities to give employment relief in times of distress, but that practice had for many years received encouragement and recognition both officially and from Committees of that House. In 1886 his right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham issued a circular to the boards of guardians containing a recommendation that in districts in which exceptional distress prevailed the guardians should confer with the local authority and endeavour to arrange with the latter for the execution of works on which unskilled labour might be immediately employed.
  MR. WHITILEY: That applied to exceptional distress.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that was so. The circular, he continued, further suggested that the men employed should be engaged on the recommendation of the guardians as being persons whom it
  1120
  was undesirable to send to the workhouse or to treat as subjects for Poor Law relief. Since that occasion the Local Government Board had on many occasions sent out similar circulars. One, he thought, was issued at the time when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton was President of the Board. There was also a circular sent out by his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland last winter, containing instructions to the committee established under his scheme, which formed the basis of this Bill.
  Not only had successive circulars approved this form of relief being giving by local authorities, but a similar line had been taken by Committees of the House itself. A Committee of that House sat in 1895 to inquire into the question of distress from want of employment, and another Committee sat in 1896, and they had. under their consideration the policy of these circulars issued by the Local Government Board. These Committees reported that they were unable to see any valid objection to the policy advocated in these circulars. It had to be remembered that the local authorities were not advised to manufacture or create work with a view to giving employment, nor were they recommended to proceed with works at a time when the climatic conditions would prevent their being properly executed. But these Committees went somewhat beyond a mere endorsement of the policy already adopted by the Local Government Board. The Committee of 1895 recommended that the guardians of any Metropolitan union might be empowered, with the sanction of the London County Council, to agree with any sanitary authority within their union that, in consideration of the latter's employing such number of persons and during such periods as might be agreed upon, the guardians should make a contribution to the sanitary authority of an amount not exceeding one-half of the cost incurred in the employment of such persons, such, contribution to be a charge upon the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. It would be observed that this proposal went considerably beyond the proposal

  1121
  in the Bill, for under the Bill any contribution from the central fund towards the works undertaken for the relief of distress by the local authority would come, not out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, but out of voluntary contributions. The Committee of 1896, after some hesitation, endorsed the recommendation of the Committee of 1895. They stated as their reason for endorsing that recommendation that in their opinion the proposed contribution from the central fund towards the work to be executed would not do more than cover the loss arising from the inferior efficiency of the labour employed in such circumstances and the extra expense of supervision and inquiry which would be necessary in connection with these works. It would be impossible to have a franker acknowledgment of the principle that work given to the unemployed by local institutions in such circumstances was, in effect, poor relief, although it was not accompanied by any of the disabilities attaching to the administration of the Poor Law. In view of this he thought he was justified in maintaining that the innovations proposed in the Government Bill were more apparent than real.
  The methods adopted by the local authorities were open to the most serious criticism. If there was one rule better established than another in connection with relief work of this kind it was the rule that work should be made as continuous as possible. That rule had been systematically violated all during the past winter by various local authorities in the country, In one important county borough in the Midlands, the town clerk reported that the greater proportion of those on the list of unemployed only received four days work between November 16th and January 2lst. The pay was at the rate of 3s. 4d. a day, so that the majority of those on the ist of unemployed received, in the shape of relief, from the local authorities without disfranchisement, at the rate of 1s. 2d. a week for eleven weeks. That might be an extreme case, but it was a very common case indeed for the unemployed to obtain relief work for only two or three days or for them to be given in turn three or four days with the prospect of waiting for
  1122
  further work until their turn came round again. In some cases the unemployed were given work in alternate weeks, but it was quite the exception for work to be given for six days in the week and for several weeks consecutively, and practically one might say that that was hardly ever done except when the wholesome influence of the Central Committee appointed under his right hon. friend's scheme was able to make itself felt. In December the average number of days work given to each of the unemployed who were relieved amounted in the provinces to 7·2 days and in London to only 5·3 days. The figures for January were a little better, being nine days in the provinces and 6½ days in London. He thought there would be a general feeling that such discontinuous work probably did more harm than good, as it was not enough to preserve the workmen's homes from being broken up, and it was just the kind of work that specially at racted the man who did want to find regular employment. He could not but agree with the view of the surveyor of a county borough who stated that in his opinion the present system of relief by local authorities largely increased the number of men who were prepared to accept two days work a week, and go on in that way for the remainder of their existence. Another and most important defect in the methods of local authorities was the absence of sufficient discrimination between those who were deserving and those who were undeserving of relief of this kind. He could give many cases of this, but he would mention one of a London borough in which one day's work was given to all married men on the register before Christmas so as to ensure their having something on Christmas Day. That was really nothing more nor less than a charitable dole, and could not possibly do any good.
  MR. H. LAWSON: Was that Poplar?
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid he would not give the name, but it was not Poplar. This defective discrimination was usually accompanied by discontinuity of work and by exiguous earnings, which were really doles under the mask of wages. An instance of this was afforded

  1123
  by an urban district just outside London which in September last passed a resolution that 30s. a week should be the minimum wage given to its employees, and when the accounts of the council came to be audited it was stated, and not denied, that persons had actually left the employment in which they were regularly engaged in order to take jobs upon the relief works opened by the council for the unemployed so that they might get the advantage of the minimum wage.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: Was that done under the scheme this winter?
  MR. GERALD BALFOURreplied that it was net—it was in a district outside London. The position under a system of administration such as he had described was correctly summed up by a committee of the Charity Organisation Society in a report issued by them in November last where they said—
  "There are at present two public relief agencies in the field—the Poor Law under the orders of the Local Government Board, and the borough councils who have a free hand."
  What was the best method of dealing with that situation? He sup-posed his hon. friend would probably say that the proper way to deal with the situation was to prevent the local authorities from giving employment relief in any shape or form, and to insist that boards of guardians should return to stricter methods of Poor Law relief and administration. That was heroic, but he very much questioned whether, in times of exceptional distress, it would be found to be practical politics. The feeling that respectable persons who were out of employment through no fault of their own, but simply by reason of the fluctuations in our industrial system, should have some prospect before them other than the workhouse or the guardians' relief yard was one that must be reckoned with. Moreover, it was a growing feeling, and, if his hon. friend had his way, the effect would very probably be a reaction which would carry us very much further in those directions which he himself was anxious to avoid than the modest proposals of the Bill. In the opinion of the Government it was not wise at the stage we had reached to have recourse to a
  1124
  simple non possumus, or to interpose a mere dam or barrier in the way of public opinion instead of endeavouring to guide it into channels which should lead to the least harm and be most likely to be fruitful of good. Therefore, their object had been to create a permanent machinery which should organise and combine and influence in directions approved by experience the actual efforts that should be made at the present time for the relief of the unemployed. Still more, they wanted to provide machinery which should be able accurately and properly to discriminate between the classes whom it was desirable to relieve by this Bill and those whom, they thought, ought to be more properly dealt with under the Poor Law. The question of discrimination was the crux of the problem. If they could not adequately distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving, if both alike were to be mingled in the, receipt of the benefits intended by the Bill, it was quite possible that the measure would do more harm than good, rather increasing than diminishing the difficulties of the Poor Law authorities. But he did not believe that adequate discrimination was impossible. That was proved, to his mind, even by the working of his right hon. friend's scheme, under which, on the whole, the discrimination had been carried out not unsatisfactorily, but he should hope for very much better results when they had a machinery which was permanent, with a staff of its own ultimately, with a body of experience and tradition behind it, controlled by the regulations of the Local Government Board and, in addition, compelled to cut its coat according to its cloth. It had to be remembered that none of the proposed new bodies would be entitled—with one exception to which he would refer—to provide employment except out of voluntary contributions.
  His hon. friend the Member for Chelsea was very much concerned at the prospect of a new charge being imposed on the rates to assist the unemployed. But what was the nature of the expenditure that would be sanctioned out of the rates under the Bill as introduced? In the Bill it was expressed negatively; it might with advantage be expressed more

  1125
  precisely and positively, and he would be prepared to consider Amendment with that object in view. The purpose for which under the Bill they propose that it should be possible to draw upon the rates were four—(1) the expenses of the establishment of the local and central bodies, (2) the expenses of providing and maintaining labour exchanges and employment registers, (3) the expenses connected with migration and emigration, and (4) the expenses of acquiring, equipping and maintaining farm colonies and providing work for the unemployed on those colonies. As regarded the second and third of these proposals there was no very great novelty. The London municipal boroughs were already empowered to establish labour bureaux, and although the law on the point was somewhat obscure, several local authorities in the provinces had done the same thing. With regard to number three, not only the guardians but the county councils had the power to use the rates at the present time for aiding emigration. As to the expense of the establishment and the staff of the local and central bodies, that was merely a necessary corollary to the central principle of the Bill, which was to establish such bodies and make them permanent. He did not suppose any one was likely to quarrel with such proposals except those root-and-branch opposed to the Bill. The expenditure upon farm colonies stood upon a somewhat different footing, but he thought it would be very undesirable that the central bodies should not be given an opportunity of trying the experiment of farm colonies, and if the experiment was to be given a fair trial it was clear such farm colonies must form a permanent part of their machinery. They could not improvise a farm colony and, once they had established a farm colony, it was necessary to provide for it maintenance from a source which could be relied upon year in and year out.
  MR. H. LAWSON: Will the farm colonies be preparatory to emigration?
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid he was coming to that point. It seemed to follow that at all events the expense o acquiring, equipping, and maintaining a farm colony should be payable out of the rates. But he might be asked why
  1126
  go beyond that; why provide in the Bill not only that farm colonies might be acquired, maintained, and equipped out of the rates, but also that employment thereon might be provided out of the rates? Was not that an exception to the rule generally laid down in the Bill that expenses of that kind were to be drawn not from the rates but from voluntary contributions? He admitted there was some force in the objection, but really the considerations which had moved the Government were principally those of administrative convenience. It would be difficult and perhaps impossible to distinguish between the expense of maintenance and the expense incurred in providing work for the unemployed on the farm colony, and for that reason no attempt was made to distinguish the two in the Bill. Whether the item was likely to be an important one or not was a doubtful matter. He thought for many reasons farm colonies were not adapted to meet the requirements of the large majority of the unemployed for whom the Bill was intended. Farm colonies, in his opinion, should be primarily for tae purpose of training in agricultural pursuits persons who were willing to emigrate or to change from a town life altogether to life in the country. He thought there would, amongst the better class unemployed in the large centres of industry, always be a percentage of men who were willing to leave town life and take to country life. What the percentage was he would not like to attempt to conjecture, and he did not think anything but experience would show, but that there was an appreciable number of such men he did not for a moment doubt. The message of hope which had been conveyed in a report just issued by Mr. Rider Haggard should remind them that the potentialities in that direction were possibly considerably more than many people, as a rule, suspected.
  Before he sat down there were one or two points to which he would like to advert, upon which some misconception seemed to have arisen. The proviso to Sub-section 5 of the Bill had been interpreted to mean that the standard rate of wages paid in the district for any class of work should not be paid for work provided for the unemployed by the central body. That

  1127
  was a mistake. The words had been chosen so as to admit of the payment of the standard wage per hour. It was only the standard remuneration measured by the week which must be something less than the rate for unskilled labour. That would be attained by reducing the hours rather than by reducing the pay per hour. He would be quite willing to adopt another form of words if a better could be suggested. It seemed, moreover to be commonly thought that the Bill was compulsory in London, but optional in the provinces. That was not quite correct even with regard to counties; and with regard to county boroughs, which were much more important in this matter, it was not correct at all. Even in counties where bodies had not been constituted under the Act the county council would be under the obligation to constitute a special committee charged with the duty of establishing a labour exchange and employment registry. The effect would be to create a kind of network of labour bureaux and employment registries all over the county, which might possibly in the end prove to be one of the most important results of the Act.
  MR. KEIR HARDIE: Will these be under the Local Government Board or the Board of Trade?
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid they would be under the Local Government Board. They would, of course, be under the bodies created by the Act, but under the Local Government Board so far as the latter might make regulations respecting them. As to the county boroughs, the adoption of the provisions of the Bill was not optional, but compulsory, only subject to postponement with the consent of the Local Government Board. He conceived the Local Government Board would not postpone without very good cause being shown. He entirely sympathised with the idea that the unemployed might be attracted into London if the Bill applied to London alone. In his judgment the best safeguard against that danger—undoubtedly a considerable danger—was to be found in the provision of a sufficient period of residence. In his judgment such period ought not to be less than twelve months. He was quite
  1128
  willing to consider the omission of that provision as to postponement altogether, if the county boroughs did not strongly object, which he did not for a moment suppose they would. As to Clause 4, dealing with the powers of the Local Government Board, very insufficient attention had been given to that. The powers were very wide indeed, and rendered unnecessary the insertion of a variety of safeguards and limitations which otherwise would have had their place in the text of the Bill. The effect of the Bill, if passed, would be not indeed to bring the borough councils under the direct control of the Local Government Board but to bring them indirectly within the influence of that Board through the new administrative bodies which the Bill created. The Local Government Board were fully cognisant of the very great and heavy responsibility which the Bill would throw upon them and the importance of the part which the central authority would have to play, especially at the outset, if the advantages which the promoters hoped from that measure were destined to be realised. He begged to move the Second Reading of the Bill.
  Motion made, and Question propose, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid he rose to move "That it is most inexpedient for the national welfare, contrary to the best interests of the State and especially detrimental to the poor themselves, by tending to reduce their self-reliance and independence, that a system of relief, whether supported by municipal rates or Imperial taxation, be established in addition to and outside the existing Poor Law." He was aware he would lay himself open possibly to being misunderstood, and that it would probably be said that he was out of sympathy with some of the great social questions of the present day. They were all agreed that the condition of the country at the present time was not all they could desire, and in objecting to this Bill he claimed to be actuated by the same motives as hon. Gentlemen who supported it in every way. He did not think that this was the right way to look at this problem. When a patient was ill they did not give him

  1129
  everything he asked for, and it was not considered unkind to refuse what was not for the patient's good. He felt very keenly the position of the poor, with whom it had been his interest and lot to work for many years. He was getting well on in life and he had seen as much as any of those who were taking an interest in this problem. He objected to this measure not only be cause he thought it was contrary to the welfare of the whole country, but because in his opinion, it would be detrimental to the interests of the poor people whom it was specially proposed to relieve. If the House would bear with him in the somewhat lengthened remarks he had to make, he would endeavour to show that all past experience proved that, in doing this, they were really aggravating the sufferings and hardships of the people, and, instead of relieving, tending largely to increase their misfortune.
  What were the objects of the Bill? The right hon. Gentleman who introduced it had described its provisions, and, verbally, it was correct to say that the measure did not give the right to employment, but he believed that the measure constructively, and by the general interpretation of everybody, did give the right to every person to receive employment from the public authorities. It had established in the public mind the idea—and this to him was a startlingly novel feature—that they were going to pass an Act of Parliament which would give people the right to obtain employment when they could not, or did not get it by themselves. He was sure that was the idea which the public had of the Bill, and in order to show this, he would refer to one or two speeches which had been made. At a meeting of the Labour Joint Committee the other day, a resolution was passed in the following terms—
  "That we express our opinion that the recognition of the responsibility of the public authorities to provide work for the unemployed is a sound principle upon which to base any attempt to deal with unemployment."
  The committee consisted of gentlemen of great position in the industrial world who had taken a deep interest in the subject, and that resolution appeared to
  1130
  show clearly that they regarded the Bill as providing a means by which the State would find employment for those who needed it. At a meeting the other day, after the Leicester unemployed arrived in London, Alderman Sanders, who had a great deal to do in getting up the meeting, expressed the opinion that the Leicester men were right in coming to London to make a demonstration, not to the King who was powerless in the matter, but to the Members of Parliament who could help, and would do so as soon as sufficient pressure was brought to bear upon them, and he added—
  "A Bill should be passed to enable every honest workman to get work when he demanded it and could not get it from a private employer."
  These were serious considerations. This Bill had a number of safeguards connected with it which would be of no earthly use when it became law. These safeguards would fail at once if they survived the Committee stage. Conceive it how they would, if they passed this measure it would be implied that Parliament had laid down for the first time that work should be supplied for the unemployed throughout the country. He ventured to say that the House ought to think very long and very carefully before they passed such a measure. This was not a Party question in any sense. It was a question of the very gravest moment for the welfare of the country. It was not, as he would show presently, a new experiment. It was a policy which, as past experience had shown, brought disaster and serious consequences with it. He ventured to assert that the want of employment was small, but, even if it was large, he said emphatically that it would be absolutely impossible to carry out such a Bill as this. If the real demand for employment was large the provisions to be found in this Bill would be as nothing in doing what was wanted, but the attempt to carry it out would produce evils of a very far-reaching nature. It would create conditions which would be very difficult to alter. He considered that the bringing in of the Bill had already done a great deal of mischief, and the passing of it would do an immense deal of evil to the community at large.

  1131
  In looking at this measure from the practical point of view the first question to be considered was—Is the employment to be remunerative or unremunerative? If there was any idea that the work that was to be supplied was to be remunerative, was it conceivable that a public body could find it sooner or better than an employer or the unemployed themselves? Surely the trade of this country had been built up by the industry and enterprise of the people—employers and employed—and not by the State, and, therefore, if the work which was to be done under the provisions of this Bill was to be remunerative there was no need to have the Bill at all, because work would be forthcoming without it. He did not believe that a body of aldermen, a town council, or even the President of the Board of Trade, could do anything to assist trade if it was to be of a remunerative character. But the fact was that the work which would be supplied would not be of a remunerative character. It would be work which would cost a great deal more than it was worth, and, therefore, it would be of an unprofitable nature. There was no difficulty, of course, in creating work if money was provided to pay for it. Stones could be carted up a hill and then carted down again, but the only way to get the poor of the country to make progress was by remunerative work. Therefore, it seemed to him that what was really proposed was to pass an Act of Parliament to create unprofitable work at the cost of someone else—that was to say, that the loss should be cast on the ratepayers or the taxpayers. The real crux of the Bill was that it was to provide work for those who could not get it for themselves, and that the loss resulting from this unremunerative work should fall upon others.
  The next question was—Who is going to pay for the unremunerative work? They must face the absolute facts of the case. The Bill said that the loss was to be borne the rates. This proposal, he noticed, was not quite accepted by all the supporters of the Bill. Many persons wished to throw the loss on taxation. It was germane to the question to refer to what would be the effect of throwing this additional burden on the rates. People were apt to forget the present
  1132
  condition of the rates, and he would refer to the facts in connection with the borough of Islington, part of which he had the honour to represent in that House. In the last ten years for one thing and another there had bean an addition to the rates to the extent of 1s. 7½d. in the £, while, at the same time the debt of that parish had increased by £1,383,000. That 1s. 7½d. on the rateable value of £2,000,000 meant that at the present time there was taken from the ratepayers of the borough of Islington £162,500 a year more than ten years ago Was not that a somewhat startling fact? Was not that, enough to account for some of the want of employment? They were going by this Bill to increase the cost to the rates. He said emphatically that they must consider where this great cost was to come from and who would have to pay it. In 1901 in the same parish there were 582 empty houses, and there were now 1,481. According to the borough treasurer, if those houses were occupied there would be a reduction of 3d. in the £ in the rates of Islington alone. They were driving away the people, and by that means causing a greater burden to those at the bottom of the scale who were suffering most now, and who had great difficulty in keeping their head above water. It was a startling fact, as showing how the rates were increasing, that in April last in Islington 6,800 summonses were issued for rates in the last quarter against people who could not pay. The local paper said this showed how the people were being sucked dry by the existing rates. And yet it was proposed on what he thought were very insufficient reasons to impose an additional burden which he ventured to say would, in a short time, amount to a figure they had no idea of at present, to provide unprofitable work for the unemployed at rates of payment he should presently refer to.
  What was true of Islington was true also of the whole country. The rateable value of England and Wales, including London, in 1874 was £115,000,000, and in 1902 £l95,000,000, and, instead of there being a reduction in the rates, they had increased from £20,000,000 in 1874 to £42,500,000 now. Nor was that all. The grants from the Imperial Exchequer,

  1133
  which amounted in 1874 to £1,500,000, had now reached £12,500,000, so that the total rates had increased in England and Wales from £21,500,000 in 1874 to £55,000,000 now. These somewhat startling facts were enough to show that the House should pause and consider seriously when it was proposed that a great additional outlay should take place. The Bill also authorised the local ties to borrow money. This power to borrow was, to his mind, one of the curses of the present day. They were borrowing in all directions and piling up indebtedness, the cost of which fell more and more on the poorest of the poor, who were struggling not to sink but to keep their heads above water. This cause must lead to a shrinkage of employment. This large additional sum of £162,500 was taken out of the pockets of a population of 350,000, nearly all of whom were comparatively small people, and there must be, therefore, less for them to spend and to fructify in producing employment. He maintained that the large increase in the rates had done not a little to increase the shortage of labour, which was the very trouble that was proposed to be dealt with by the Bill.
  It was said, "Do not put this charge on the rates but on the taxes." The Labour Joint Committee said that the Exchequer should supply most of the cost, because it was easier to pay out of the Exchequer than out of the rates. But what did that mean? It meant further taxes on tea, sugar, tobacco, and alcohol. It was said that the receipts from the duty on alcohol were decreasing, and it was to be hoped that the habits of the people were improving in that respect. Then, if that were the case, it meant that the income-tax was to be increased, because there was a general idea that the rich ought to pay, and that the rich were the people who paid income-tax. He had no objection to the rich paying a good deal; he, himself, should like to be able to pay more income-tax. But was it a fact that they were making the rich pay more in increasing the income-tax, and not injuring the poor far more seriously? In Schedule D of the income-tax there were 250,000 persons paying income-tax on incomes under £200 a year; and there were only
  1134
  630 in the same schedule with incomes over£5,000 a year; and less than 9,000 with over £1,000 a year. That showed that if the income-tax were increased, it would add immensely to the burden on small persons at the bottom of the scale. He had been a little amused when the right hon. Gentleman referred to voluntary contributions. Now, did the right hon. Gentleman, or any one else, really believe that after this Bill was passed into law there would be any voluntary contributions for the unemployed? What was the use of blinding their eyes to that fact? He considered that that clause of the Bill might as well come out at once. His contention was that if this Bill passed employment would be given to the unemployed at the cost of the employed, and that the evil of unemployment, instead of being relieved, would only be aggravated in every possible way. Thousands who were now struggling manfully to keep their heads above water and pay their way would be dragged down by excessive burdens of rates or taxes and soon join the ranks of the unemployed and aggravate the evil we all deplored.
  The next point to consider was the working of the Bill. In the first place it would create a new spending authority for the purpose of providing relief. That was a most serious step to contemplate. From a letter which appeared in The Times the previous day, there was no doubt that a large section of those gentlemen who had been at work in administering the Mansion House Unemployed Fund during the last six months saw great danger in creating this new spending department for providing relief. Let them say what they would, this employment was relief. He wished to press that point. Some people talked as if this employment was not relief, and that the men who received it were to a certain extent independent; but the fact could not be got over that it was relief, and that by the Bill a new upper-class relief agency was going to be created. It was impossible to conceive the enormous difficulties that would arise in the working of the measure. There would be continued rivalry between different bodies as to how these man were to be relieved.

  1135
  The next point was as to the selection of the recipients of employment. The right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that that was the crux of the question; and that if the mode of selecting the recipients was not carefully guarded more harm than good would be done. As the Bill was drawn it stated that—
  "The local body shall make themselves acquainted with the conditions of labour within their area, and inquire into and discriminate between any applications made to them from persons unemployed; and if the local body are satisfied that any such applicant is honestly desirous of obtaining work, but is temporarily unable to do so from exceptional causes over which he has no control. … then they may endeavour to obtain work for the applicant."
  Surely that was extremely vague. He would ask a practical question. How long was a man to be out of work before he became eligible to get a grant? Was he to be eligible after the first week? Was there to be any test of thrift on the man's part? Was he to show any indication of foresight or providence? These were matters of the very greatest importance, and unless these inquiries were gone into very carefully the result would be very much worse than any other form of relief under the Poor Law. Then, were women out of work to be eligible for relief; or were clerks who earned smaller salaries than the wages of a good mechanic? Some of the saddest cases in his experience were those of clerks who had to wear a black coat and hat, who lived respectable lives at a salary less than a good mechanic, and who at forty, fifty, or sixty years of age were thrown out of employment. Surely these men should be eligible. [Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Why not?] They formed a large part of the unemployed, but would not come forward to demand relief, although these were the people who really ought to be looked after.
  There was another point: if a man could not get work at his trade at full trade-union rates, was he to be considered out of work and to be provided with work? That was a serious question to ask. He knew perfectly well that a great deal would turn on that particular point, because, after all, a man might be able to earn a living at a smaller rate of wages than the trade-union scale, and yet that would not be sweating. He maintained that it was a very startling
  1136
  and sweeping thing to pass a law which would declare that because a man could not get the full trade-union rate of wages at his own trade, although he might get work in another trade at lower wages, he was to be considered unemployed? If that was to be the case, he contended that they would undermine the very essence of the trade of the country. He insisted emphatically that they must, in this Bill consider, in the selection of candidates for relief employment, whether these men could earn a sufficiency for themselves and families in other directions even if they could not get the full trade-union rate of wages.
  As regarded wages, he had heard with some surprise the remarks of he right hon. Gentleman on the subject, because he thought that the Bill provided that the wages to be earned were to be smaller than the wages earned by unskilled labour. The clause provided that the wages paid should be less than was ordinarily earned by unskilled labour during a full week's work. That would appear to mean that the trade-union rate of wages would be paid for a short time during the week provided that the total earnings during a week did lot exceed that earned by unskilled labour for a whole week. That practically meant that the full rate of wages was to be maintained. He protested against that. Let them have the matter out. It was no good fencing with the question. Let hon. Gentlemen understand that, if the Bill passed, every unemployed workman would receive at the public expense full trade-union rates of wages whether employed on remunerative work or not. Indeed, if this were so, and it seemed to be the fact, the Bill was even more mischievous than he thought it was. What happened in his own parish? There was a certain amount of unemployment, and a number of men were employed at a lower rate of wages than the trade-union rate. The borough engineer declared that the men were not worth the trade-union rate; but it was settled by the council that the men should be paid full trade-union rates, and they were paid back pay at those rates. He might be behind the times; but it appeared to him extraordinary to pass an Act of Parliament

  1137
  by which men were to be paid full trade union rates at the public expense, and by people many of whom were not as well off as the men who were paid. The Poor Law Commission of 1834 said that all relief afforded to the able-bodied or their families should be treated as a loan, and was to be recoverable out of their subsequent wages. There was no such clause in the present Bill. Further, the Commission declared—
  "The first and most essential of all conditions, a principle which we find universally admitted, is that his (i.e., the recipient of aid or a pauper) situation as a whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class. Throughout the evidence it is shown that in proportion as the condition of any pauper class is elevated above the condition of independent labourers, the conditions of the independent class is depressed, their industry is impaired, their employment becomes unsteady, and their remuneration in wages is diminished … Every penny bestowed that tends to render the condition of the pauper more eligible than that of the independent labourer is a bounty on indolence and vice."
  That was the statement of the great Commission of 1834. Now, the right hon. Gentleman stated that the Bill provided that a mechanic should have the full rate of wages.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: All I said was that the Bill did not prevent it.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid that that came to the same thing. The matter was very important. The only possible way of influencing the man that would be affected by the Bill was that he should be paid such wages that he should have every inducement to leave the work to be provided under the Act as soon as possible, so as to get higher wages for himself, and that he should have the keenest interest in this respect himself. He was glad that he had raised this matter, although it might be used against him in hits own constituency. If the Bill removed the only incentive for a man to return to his ordinary work, it would effect more mischief than he had imagined.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that the hon. Gentleman appeared to forget that the total weekly remuneration must not
  1138
  exceed that which could be earned by an unskilled labourer for a full week.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYasked if he were to understand that a man, even if employed continuously, would not receive a greater wage than would be earned by an unskilled labourer.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Certainly.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid that in that case he did not understand the right hon. Gentleman's remark about trade-union wages being paid.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that what he stated was that if trade-union rates were paid the total remuneration must be something less than that which could be earned by an ordinary unskilled labourer.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid then that meant that the men were only to be employed for a certain number of hours. A deputation to the right hon. Gentleman, however, urged—
  "Unless all limitations upon rates of wages paid, which are a serious menace to trades unions, are removed, the Bill cannot be accepted by organised labour, and we shall then call upon all friends of labour in Parliament to reject it."
  That meant that the trades unions insisted that the men to be employed should be paid the full trade-union rate of wages. He protested against that principle. Every man might not be able to get employment; but it was monstrous that he should be paid the full trade-union rate of wages on work which could not be remunerative and might involve considerable loss, a loss to be made up by others, many of whom were but little better off than the recipients themselves.
  As to the emigration clause, reasonable and natural emigration was, of course, necessary; but it was not the unemployed or the ne'er-do-wells that emigrated. The people who emigrated were the strong and the healthy; the immigrants, on the contrary, were a most startling class. It reminded him of a man who drew whiskey out of a cask replenishing it with water, and then wondering why it had not maintained its

  1139
  strength. He did not object to natural emigration; but to frame a Bill to get rid of the best portion of the working population, and at the same time to admit the worst class of immigrant, was one of the most extraordinary pieces of logic which he had ever heard.
  Then as to farm colonies, surely they were rather a myth. He could not see how they could effect much good. They certainly would not relieve the want of employment among the better class of workers in London; and they were more a name than a reality. He had read of cases when men on a farm colony were paid 25s. a week, whereas the wages of labourers in the locality were very much lower. Surely that could not tend to promote contentment in the district. It meant that a man could come up to London and be sent back again as an unemployed at a higher wage than he was previously earning. The interesting Report issued recently by the Farm Colonies for the Unemployed last winter bore immensely upon this subject. The superintendent of the colony reported "that there were a large proportion of men who required the closest supervision in order to get from them anything like the standard of an ordinary day's work. The general lack of ambition in the men was very noticeable." He thought it was a very strong order to send such men to farm colonies. Such men ought to come under, and be dealt with by, the Poor Law, and for his part he could not see why they should be picked cut to receive these advantages which were denied to others.
  With regard to the question of disfranchisement he had no doubt the clause dealing with that was kindly meant, and he knew he should offend a great many hon. Members when he said that he considered that to put in a clause that those who received this kind of relief should not be disfranchised was wrong. They knew these people were unfortunate and they were all sorry to see misfortune, but was it right or politic, was it for the good of other people and for these people themselves that the old notion that taxation and representation should go together should
  1140
  be done away with, and that we should establish a law that a man should be kept by the community and should also make the laws for the community and vote on his own relief? If this were to be voted on by ballot in this House he did not believe such a principle would be for a moment conceded. It was only the fact that they were afraid to say what they ought to say that such a suggestion became possible. In his judgment it was infinitely kinder and better to hold out the idea that it was better for a man to do what he could for himself and keep his vote. This Bill created a class of persons supported by the rates who were not paupers; a superior class of social dependents, and the principle suggested was against the whole experience of the Poor Law Inquiry of 1834. They all regretted failures, but to tell a man he was not a failure did not make that man a success. The wise policy was to uphold that and induce the man to make every effort not to fail, rather than to make it easier, as this Bill did, for him to fail and then to tell him he was not a failure and that he was as good a citizen as he was before.
  As to the effect of this Bill. First he asked what would be its effect upon London. The Bill was said to be compulsory in London and not elsewhere. The right hon. Gentleman had somewhat altered that, but whether it was altered or not there was a great deal of difference between London and elsewhere. He thought it was very cruel on London that this difference should be made; in fact, he could not think of anything, more unfair to London than this Bill. They had all read the account of the march of the unemployed on London. It was one of the saddest incidents he had known. But this Bill would promote and encourage these unhappy incidents. What they wanted was to encourage people to leave London rather than to come to London, and to make them understand that there was much more to do out of London than in it. The effect of this Bill on London would be of a most disastrous character. The remedy suggested by some was to make this Bill compulsory in the whole of the country, but he protested against that. If it was a bad Bill it ought

  1141
  to be dropped altogether, because if it were carried out all over England the effect would become so large and so alarming as to be beyond all Government control. What effect would this Bill have on employment itself? Would it increase or decrease employment? The whole question was one of employment, and the statistics certainly suggested there had been some exaggeration as to the shortage of employment during the past winter. But if there was a shortage of employment this Bill would tend rather to increase than decrease the shortage. Would this Bill tend to reduce the output or increase the work of London? Had it not already tended to make it more impossible to carry out works except at a loss? Had it not tended to discourage enterprise, and would it not tend to the increase of that municipal socialism, which in his opinion was a blot on the country, and prevent private enterprise creating profitable work? All these were facts which would tend largely to do away with the employment of labour, because capital was shy and would not enter into enterprises unless there was a fair chance that those enterprises would be successful, and further capital was not stationary. It could move from place to place. He thought the effect of this Bill would be to discourage enterprise and so decrease the amount of labour now employed.
  Then what would be its effect upon wages? The Parliamentary Committee was alive to the danger that it must lower wages, and they said that it must not in any way interfere with wages. But he would ask any man of business in the House whether it was conceivable that a law could be carried out, giving unprofitable employment to thousands of the community without affecting wages. Was it not certain that such a thing must lower wages, and to try to prevent it as hopeless as attempting to stop the rise of the tide. The money necessary to pay the wages did not grow nor drop from the skies; it was simply thrift in the past made use of in the present, and if this Bill were passed it must eat up some of the funds which otherwise would go to supply wages in the future, and therefore the result of this Bill must be to reduce the wage
  1142
  fund of the community. One hon. Member recently said that we did not pay people enough; we did not pay a living wage and that therefore there must be a Bill of this sort in order to give employment to unemployed. No doubt there was some truth in that. There was a time when labour did not get its fair share, but it was open to doubt whether now a good deal of the want of employment now was not due to the fact that capital could not get a remunerative return. Many people hesitated to embark in enterprise now who would have embarked formerly, and that in itself looked as if enterprise was not so profitable as before, and, that being the case, the result again must be to reduce wages. The affect of this Bill must be ultimately to reduce the aggregate amount paid in wages. Nearly the whole burden of the Report of the Commission of 1834 dwelt on this question of supplementing wages by rates or other public funds, and it proved conclusively that it was fatal to the employed and unemployed alike. That showed conclusively the way in which this Bill would be likely to interfere with the progress of trade and industry and to reduce wages, and to become a blight on enterprise and on industry. He would like, with reference to the effect on industry and enterprise, to quote from letter in that day's paper. The Bethnal Green Committee reported—
  "Probably the most unsatisfactory result of having given work in the borough to 1,748 of the unemployed during the last winter has been the creation of a class of men who regard them-selves as dependent upon a council for work. These men do not realise that the work given to them has been for the sole purpose of helping to tide them over a bad season. Many men regard the council as a large employer of labour able to continuously provide additional work to which they have established a right by having their names entered in the register.
  "The immediate effect on the men themselves is directly calculated to lower their independence and to reduce their resourcefulness."
  That was a very grave consideration. The real effect of the Bill was pointed out in good words by Mr. Loch, the secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, a man who had done more for the poor—
  MR. CROOKS: No, no.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: A man who had done more for the poor than almost anyone else—
  "The chief danger, however, is the creation of a new, and ultimately a very large, class of State dependents. There is abundant evidence that we have during the last twenty year been creating such a class. Since the unemployed circular of the Local Government Board which was issued in 1886, the demand for employment relief from local bodies has continually increased. Larger numbers have been relieved by them, and popular intimidation has often forced the hand of reluctant authorities…It may be expected, therefore, that the local demand for employment relief will continue and will be met by the borough councils, and will be supplemented by the central committee dealing with selected cases. It this be so, the Bill will not stop the growth of dependents upon, employment relief, but will supplement it and stimulate it."
  Then as to the cost; could the Bill do what it professed at anything like the amount mentioned? A halfpenny or a penny rate had been referred to. A halfpenny rate in London represented about £80,000. Last winter the Mansion House Fund raised about £50,000, and the local authorities spent a great deal in addition; 40,000 or 50,000 people applied, and about 2,600 were relieved by that fund.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WALTER LONG, Bristol, S.): The hon. Member is making a grave error. He says that £50,000, were raised by the central committee, and that the municipalities spent considerable sums in addition. He then states that only 2,600 were relieved, ignoring the fact that those 2,600 had no reference whatever to the relief given by the municipalities.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid the 2,600 were relieved entirely by the £50,000—as he thought he stated. The 2,600 were relieved by the Mansion House Fund, and in addition large sums were raised, as at Islington and elsewhere, by the municipalities.
  MR. WALTER LONG: My hon. friend is still not stating the case correctly. The central committee had considerable sums to dispose of, and they applied the money in two ways: first, by direct assistance to men employed in particular works, and, secondly, by contributions to local authorities for work which they were carrying out. The 2,600 were the men
  1144
  employed directly by the central committee.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYsaid the point he was trying to make was as to the cost and it appeared that last winter a sum roughly equivalent to the proceeds of a halfpenny rate was expended. According to the last Returns of the Board of Trade there were 5 per cent. of unemployed, but if a really serious shortage of employment arose throughout the country the percentage would be nearer 15 or 20. A penny rate throughout the country would bring in about £1,000,000 a year—a sum which would be absolutely infinitesimal compared with the cost of such a shortage of employment. Twenty years ago Professor Leoni Levi Calculated that the wages of the country amounted to £1,000,000,000 a year. The amount now would be considerably larger, but even on £l,000,000,000 a shortage of employment represented by 10 or 15 per cent. would mean £100,000,000 or £150,000,000, to meet which a penny rate would be absolutely useless. The demand for employment, if once granted, would mean that employment must be given whatever happened, and this penny rate would be like the 3d.rate in connection with education; it would be but the beginning of a gigantic expenditure, loading to an enormous demoralisation of the people.
  Having shown the object, the working, he effect, and the cost of the Bill, he naturally asked whether it was necessary to pass such a measure as that now proposed. Was employment worse than it was twenty years ago? According to statistics it was not. In fact, it might fairly be said that things were not as bad now as they formerly were. He was now coming to the most thorny portion of his remarks. It was a dangerous thing for a politician to say, but he was emphatically of opinion that many of the causes leading to the present trouble were curable by the people themselves. Trades unionists would not deny that wages were higher, and the necessaries of life cheaper than they used to be. One of he great points in connection with the Report of 1834 was the ignorance of the people, but for thirty years we had had compulsory education, so that that plea was no longer valid. With wages higher,

  1145
  education universal, and commodities cheaper, was it not a strange thing that pauperism was growing rapidly?
  MR. LOUGH: Only since the war.
  SIR GEORGE BARTLEYpointed out that one of the most startling facts was that in the last week's Returns, although employment was better than a year ago, there was a considerable increase in pauperism. In considering this problem it was necessary to face the question of the expenditure of the people on alcohol and amusements. Although so much was heard of the lack of employment and the increase of poverty, yet the expenditure on alcohol per family in the United Kingdom amounted to £19 14s.11d. It could not be said that expensive wines were the cause of the high expenditure, as the amount per family in England was £19 4s. 7d. without wine, and only slightly over £20 wine included. Did not that show that the condition of the people arose largely from causes which without this Bill the people themselves, if they chose, could amend to a very great extent? If wages were better, necessities cheaper, and employment not worse, and at the same time the expenditure on alcohol and other extravagances was maintained, was it not clear that the people themselves, and not the State or the community, should be appealed to for real relief?
  This was not the first time such an experiment had been tried of finding employment for the unemployed. He had already referred to the condition of the country previous to 1834. Every effort was made to supplement wages by the system of municipal employment, but it was found to be so harmful to the people that by a House of Commons just reformed, made more democratic, and put upon a broader franchise, it was done away with. Then there was the lesson taught by the establishment of municipal workshops in Paris in 1848. The experiment was initiated from the very best motives. It was declared to be the duty of the State to guarantee work to every citizen—in the language of the present day to provide work for the
  1146
  unemployed. The unemployed man who desired work had to furnish himself with a certificate of domicile from his landlord, get it stamped by the police, and present it at the office of the mayor of his ward, where it was exchanged for a ticket for work. Work in Paris was confined to residents in Paris, and the men received certain wages. Recourse was had to the simplest farms of manual labour, such as earth works, levelling, fetching and carrying tools, and so forth. The continual cry of the director as the brigade kept multiplying under his hands was "work, more work." Meanwhile the work that was done was costly, partly because many of the labourers were tradesmen unfit for the job, partly because many put no heart into their efforts, observing that anyhow some pay was secure. This was all wonderfully like the present day. He did not for a moment say that the state of London to-day was the same as that of Paris in 1848, but human nature was very much the same. And what were the results of that experiment in Paris? Private factories came rapidly to a standstill for lack of hands. Either the masters closed them in despair, or because the men deserted them, preferring the chance of public employment. Trade was consequently worse disorganised than before. and the distress increased. Provincials flocked up in thousands to share in the benefits of Paris. Lodgings, which in January had held about 8,000 or 10,000 persons, by the middle of April were crammed with 30,000. The rapidity with which the system grew was shown by the fact that on February 28th about 8,000 men were supposed to be out of work; on March 15th, 14,000 were brigaded for work; on March 20th, work was found for 12,000 men, and cost £2,000 a day; on April 1st, 40 000 men were brigaded; on April 16th 66,000 men were brigaded, and on June 20th the number had increased to 115,000, and a credit of 3,000,000 francs was voted by the Chambers. In four months the movement had grown to such an enormous extent that it had to be brought to an end. Had not that experiment a lesson for England? He did not wish to point the moral, as he did not believe the same final result would happen in London. But it was a serious thing to

  1147
  raise the hopes of tens of thousands of people, leading them to believe that they were going to get constant work. In Paris it led to that great Revolution in which 12,000 men were killed, and it was sad to think that our own Legislature, unmindful of all the experience of the past, should contemplate beginning such a scheme.
  It might be said that he was meeting this Bill with a non possumus, but he did not wish to do that. All that had been said about a shortage of work was very important and everything seemed to turn on that. He thought they ought to first find out whether there really was a shortage of work. He trembled in this connection to mention the word "fiscal" because he knew that he would be raising a thorny subject at once, but surely it was desirable that they should look into the question to find out whether the present system tended to reduce employment. If our system tended to reduce employment in Heaven's name let them alter it, even if it upset same of their most cherished ideas, whether fiscal, social, trades union or philanthropic. It was highly desirable that they should inquire first of all carefully and impartially whether our trade was decreasing. If, as so many who did not approve of any fiscal inquiry said, our trade was not decreasing, what was the justification for this measure? Why should this Bill be passed if employment and our trade were not decreasing? Wages at present were higher and better and they might easily deal with this subject in another way. The real difficulty could only be met by the efforts of the people themselves, by thrift, self-reliance, temperance, and enterprise, and by those old-fashioned habits which had made this country what it-was to-day. He ventured to assert that no Government grants or municipal help, and not even robbing the rich—which had often been tried and had ended in greater loss to the poor—would be likely to benefit the country at the present time. Were they afraid to speak out and call things by their proper names? Was there a growing want of energy? was indolence becoming a reality on the part of the people?
  1148
  Charity, rates, and taxes could not support the people, however heavily applied, and could not save their trade and secure the people employment. The true remedy was to be found by the workers suiting themselves to the altered conditions which had arisen. This Bill would be a failure except in one respect. It could not supply profitable employment, but it would supply and encourage a want of independence and thrift on the part of the community. It would encourage fictitious employment for a time, and dam the rising tide till it burst out with all the greater and more formidable disaster.
  He felt very strongly upon this subject, and he had only spoken at, he feared, too great length because he felt that the passing of this Bill would be a fatal step in the progress of the people, because it would create a new and most demoralising Poor Law. He appealed to hon. Members not to make this a Party question, because the poor would suffer in this matter more than anyone else. The Bill was a great experiment and a speculation, and the experience of the last twenty-two years was against taking such steps as were now proposed. If the measure was limited to London it would be a monstrous injustice, and if extended to the whole country it would outgrow all Government control. This Bill would establish anew Poor Law which would appeal simply to the weakness of the members of the community and not to their strength. As it grew it would degrade more and more, and in the words of a great authority he had already quoted—
  "The degradation that way come from the distress due to want of work is as nothing compared with the enfeeblement that comes from the satisfaction of being dependent without loss of social respect."
  He therefore ventured with great, diffidence to urge the House to pause before passing this measure. Matters were not worse than they were previous to 1834. The revised Poor Law then established had done much to improve the country. It had saved tens of thousands of the poor from dependence, poverty, and pauperism. It had done this not by ministering to their weakness but to their strength. He had devoted many years endeavouring to make the

  1149
  people more self-reliant, and he believed that the only qualities which would make either a nation or an individual prosperous were self-dependence, independence temperance, and self-reliance. Let them maintain these qualities at all costs and at all hazards. This measure would enable men to more easily and pleasantly fall back into the wrong line, and for that reason he urged that the Bill should not be read a second time. He thought they should continue on the old lines, amended by the experience of the last eighty years, so as to make this country more dependent upon itself, and the aim of all laws should be to render every member of the community independent and self-supporting.
  MR. WHITMOREsaid he had the greatest possible pleasure in seconding the Amendment which had been moved by his hon. friend the Member for Islington. He had no sort of title personally to speak on this subject in the way which the hon. Member for Islington had spoken, for he was a high authority upon such subjects. He, nevertheless, seconded this Amendment with profound sincerity and the greatest earnestness, because after studying the history of this question he had been greatly impressed with the gravity of the step proposed by the Government in this Bill, which was a reversal of their present methods, and a step which might inflict incalculable mischief upon the community. This Bill laid down that in future the State should find employment for workmen who happened temporarily to be out of employment, and that was an entirely new departure. Why were they asked to take this step? He thought the Government had shown a certain amount of levity in the way they had introduced this Bill, for very little in-formation had been given to justify hon. Members in supporting it. He did not know why they were to assure that in future there would be a continuous and permanent class of unemployed deserving workmen. It was said that this Bill was not intended to give employment to the wastrel and the loafer, and the measure was based upon the assumption that there would be in the future a continuous lack of employment for deserving workmen all over the
  1150
  country. He thought that was a tremendous departure from what had been customary in the past. But was this assumption based on the truth? Was it a fact that there would be in the future this permanent and chronic lack of employment? If so, surely it was their duty to find out the real cause of this state of things. He did not think anyone would contend that the cause of this state of things was going to be removed by this Bill. In his opinion they should first ascertain what the real causes were and try to deal with them in some other way before they attempted to do something which in his judgment would tend to increase the evil which it was said that this Bill would remedy.
  The right hon. Gentleman had tried to show that although the State had never accepted the principle of finding employment for deserving working men, in effect the principle hid been acted upon by borough councils and vestries in London. He wished to point out that what had been done by the borough councils and the vestries was something different to what was now proposed by this Bill. What was done in the cases cited was done to meet temporary and exceptional distress. The President of the Local Government Board had pointed out how very badly in some cases the powers possessed by the borough councils had been exercised.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that under this Bill the local authorities would have a permanent staff, and would act under regulations of the Local Government Board.
  MR. WHITMOREsaid that the mistakes which had arisen in this respect in he past had been due to the pressure which had been put upon local authorities, and no amount of admirable regulation would be able to prevent that pressure being exercised again in the future. As to the question of a central body, why should it really be more wise in administration of this kind than local bodies were? A kind of public pressure would be brought to bear which was undesirable. The whole truth of the matter was that it had not been proved hat there was any real necessity for

  1151
  new machinery being created to give employment to the unemployed. He asked the President of the Local Government Board this Question: Was he or the Government satisfied, if there was a new class of unemployed, that its creation had not been largely due to the laxer administration of the Poor Law in recent years, and also to the fact that the municipal boroughs of London and the municipal authorities of the country had been exercising these powers in the last twenty years to give employment to workmen? That had been the policy of almost all the borough councils. Workmen had been taught to believe that they would always get work when they wanted it. This Bill would help to perpetuate the very class of unemployed whom they were mainly thinking of dealing with. Much as he disliked opposing of any measure introduced by this Government, and particularly a measure which, as they all knew, was due to the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, who deserved so well of the public for his unselfish conduct during the past few months, he must, apart from all Party and personal feeling, consider what might be the consequences to the community of this fatal step they were now asked to take. He had heard it said that the borough councils had got power and had used it during the past twenty years and that they could not arrest this mischief at all. It seemed to him that they had entered unwarily on a dangerous course for some time, not knowing the direction in which they were going. But now that the issue had been plainly brought before the House as a legislative proposal it was their plain duty, as responsible men knowing something of the history of the country in the past, to say resolutely and deliberately that they would not go further on this dangerous course, and that they would not repeat the fatal error which their forefathers had made.
  Amendment proposed—
  "To leave out all the words after the word 'That,' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, 'it is most inexpedient for the national welfare, contrary to the best interests of the State, and especially detrimental to the poor themselves, by tending to reduce their self-reliance and independence, that a system of relief, whether supported by municipal rates or Imperial taxation, be established in addition
  1152
  to and outside the existing Poor Law.'"—(Sir George Bartley.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid he took a different view from that expressed by the last speaker. He for one welcomed this Bill in principle. He thought the right hon. Gentleman the present Chief Secretary for Ireland was to be congratulated in the first place on his foresight in having created a Central Committee last year, and that he and his colleague, the President of the Local Government Board, were also to be congratulated on the courage they had shown in introducing this Bill. Perhaps the hon. Gentlemen who had spoken in opposition to the Bill would allow him to say that there was nothing whatever in the tone of their speeches of which any complaint could be made. He thought the same might be said of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, and he trusted that the same remark would apply to all successive speeches. They all desired to attain the same object, though they did not see eye to eye. In regard to the way in which the question of the unemployed should be dealt with they might differ, but they all desired, if they could, to find some solution of the problem. The hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Amendment had seen many lions in the path. He (Mr. Buxton) did not deny that this proposal was not free from risks, but these were risks which the House of Commons ought to be prepared to take. He was prepared to support the Bill on this ground largely, that he saw now existing a greater and increasing danger a condition of things which certainly led to a great amount of suffering and a great deal of demoralisation. He thought the speech of the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment was in one part the strongest argument in favour of this proposal. The hon. Gentleman made no real suggestion for a remedy, but he pointed out that pauperism was increasing, and that our Poor Law guardians had become demoralised.

  1153
  If that was so, let them at all events try to mitigate, if they could not remove, the evil. It was on that ground that he wished to support the Second Reading of the Bill, and also to do his best to support it in the Committee stage.
  So far as he was concerned, he was more disposed to applaud the courage shown in its introduction than to find fault or criticise the Bill. It appeared to him, at all events, to go in the right direction, and if it met with general approval, he thought it would do much to promote the object they had in view. What they desired at this moment was some statutory machinery by which this question could be brought under proper administration. This was the only way in which discrimination between one class of labour and another could be properly carried out. He also supported the Bill on the ground that for the first time it faced facts and recognised that the question of the unemployed was a national one. Further it was an attempt to deal with this question in anticipation. Hitherto, they had always waited until the last moment and then hurriedly did something. The hon. Gentleman who seconded the Amendment wanted to know whether the distress would be chronic or only occur from time to time.
  MR. WHITMORE: The assumption of the Bill is that it will be chronic.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid he was not speaking of the assumption of the Bill. His point was whether they should have permanent machinery for dealing with the unemployed. It could not be denied that there were from time to time, whatever the cause, occasions when the number of unemployed was so great that public opinion was roused, with the result, unfortunately, in many cases, that action was take in a panic and more harm than good was done in the matter. What he wanted to have was machinery ready and well oiled to deal with cases, whether chronic or arising in emergencies, so that it could be used at any time. Could anyone say that the present haphazard and spasmodic efforts of charity, of the Poor Law guardians and local
  1154
  authorities without any system of co-operation could really bring about the objects they had in view to relieve the genuine unemployed? Unfortunately, under the present system, it was the genuine unemployed who were very often elbowed out of any of the benefits to be derived from it. The experience of the last winter showed at all events that some method of dealing with the unemployed who were genuinely desirous of obtaining work was required. There was practically no machinery to deal with them, except the Poor Law itself. And everybody knew that the Poor Law existed not to prevent but to relieve destitution. It was neither a preventive nor restorative. In fact, when a man, through want of employment, had to apply for Poor Law relief, and came within the clutches of the Poor Law, tie unfortunately too often remained a destitute person for the rest of his life.
  The hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment said a good deal about the expenditure on relief works and pointed out that they were always carried out at some extra cost. It was obvious that that would be so. It stood to reason that a man who had not been in regular employment for a considerable number of weeks or perhaps months, and who had been earning very small wages or perhaps no wages at all, must necessarily be inferior in physique to those who had been regularly engaged on such works. He would refer the hon. Gentleman to the Parliamentary Return issued the other day, containing the reports of the surveyors; who in several cases stated that the work done by the unemployed was satisfactory, and that as the men became better nourished they could perform their work as well as the ordinary labourers in the market. The Bill had been denounced by the hon. Member for North Islington as a new departure. He admitted that it was in a sense a new departure, because it recognised that the community owed an obligation in regard to this particular class of workmen, though he did not say that it went so far as to recognise the right of the unemployed to demand employment. It seemed to him that the right hon. Gentleman the President

  1155
  of the Local Government Board had practically disposed of the question of the principle of the measure, because he had pointed out that the borough councils and the municipal boroughs of the country had in the past expended very large sums on relief works. The expenditure last year in London alone amounted to over £100,000. Further they had the power, under the present conditions, not only of carrying out works themselves, but of contributing out of the rates to the funds of the central body in order to carry out public works. This Bill die not contain any power which was not enjoyed at present by the local authorities, but it gave a recognition by the House of Commons that something ought to be done in the direction indicated.
  As regarded London, the Bill was indeed something of a new departure which, he believed, would not meet with any opposition from those hon. Members who were interested in London questions. It recognised that the poor of London of ought to be a common charge over the whole of London; and that London ought to be treated like every other town in the United Kingdom, as one area, with common interests and common burdens. That was a principle which, to his mind, ought to have been recognised long ago. Of course, there were certain risks connected with this experiment of dealing with the unemployed. But it was not such a leap in the dark as it might have been last year. They had the experience of the working of the Central Committee established by the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland; and there was evidence that that experiment had been a success. The House ought to remember that the Central Committee were very much handicapped in the work they had to do. They were brought into existence very late in the autumn; and their funds were largely curtailed through the action of certain Borough Councils. But, in spite of all that, the enormous advantage had been shown of the co-operation between various persons and bodies in working out the problem, of the necessity of uniformity of action and discrimination between various classes
  1156
  of labour. It was quite certain that after the creation of that central body of voluntary associations the work could not stop there, but that the voluntary Central Committee should disappear and become a statutory body.
  Only two alternative courses to the proposal of the Government in the Bill now before the House had been suggested. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment desired to fall back on the Poor Law of 1834. Now, everybody admitted that, on general principles, the Poor Law Act of 1834 was very valuable. But that was seventy years ago, and circumstances had altered since then in regard to the fluidity of labour and the commercial position. Therefore, he could not think that they could depend on the Poor Law of 1834 to solve existing difficulties. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman gave away his own case when he acknowledged that the great complaint at the present day was the laxity of the administration of the Poor Law. From experience in his own constituency, he had some sympathy with that criticism. But he could not quite blame the local authorities, because there were a large number of men for whom the Borough Council could not provide work, and they gave these men relief in the hope that the Central Committee would soon be able to find them employment, a hope, that was disappointed. He knew that if this Bill passed the local guardians would be relieved from the very onerous task now-put upon them. That local pressure on the local bodies was at present a very serious matter, and one of the advantages of the creation of a Central Committee would be that local pressure would be cased. The other alternative was that proposed by the Charity Organisation Society, of which Mr. Loch was secretary —a gentleman who had been so highly praised by the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment. Mr. Loch said that—
  "The remedy lay in the improvement of industrial organisation and in a more careful use of salaries, wages, profits, and other resources on the part of employers and unemployed."
  When they asked for bread, Mr. Loch gave them a stone. That theory would not deal with the problem now before the House and country.

  1157
  If the Government proposal was not accepted, all those evils to which the hon. mover and seconder of the Amendment referred would arise again in the coming winter. They were told that this matter should not be dealt with hurriedly and in a state of panic. Bui it would again if there were no machinery. They were assured that a great deal of the evil of the present system arose from overlapping and competing charity. But if things remained as they were those evils would remain combined with the laxity of administration of the Poor Law guardians.
  It was said that there was a very large amount of the expenditure of local bodies which was ineffective and extravagant; but that would necessarily recur if something in the nature of the proposals in the Bill were not adopted. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment seemed to think that because he was going to throw out this Bill he was going to save the ratepayers £100,000 a year. The only result would be that a very much larger sum would be spent year by year for relief; and that much of that amount would be wasted and do more harm than good. All the evils which the hon. Gentleman seemed to think lurked in this Bill either existed already or were imaginary. The Bill would bring system, method, safeguards, and discrimination into the solution of this most difficult of all social problems. As to the general principle of the Bill, he believed that unless they had something in the nature of unification and co-operation of all the various organisations dealing with this matter of employment, the problem would become more difficult of solution with every advancing year; and that they would have every year a larger amount of public and private money practically wasted.
  The hon. Gentleman had touched on some of the details of the Bill. As the Bill was drawn, it was only applicable compulsorily to London, and not applied compulsorily to other parts of the country. Now he gathered from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill that he was ready to meet friendly Amendments in Committee
  1158
  to make the Bill applicable to large and even small boroughs, so as to make the appointment of central committees compulsory. For himself, he regarded that as an essential Amendment which ought to be made, and that the Bill should be made compulsory, not only in London, but in all industrial centres. In regard to the actual levying of the rate and to borrowing powers he was of opinion that these should, in London, lie with the London County Council and not with the central committee. The most difficult point of the whole Bill was in regard to the question of wages. As to wages, there were two points to be considered. In the first place, they should take care that the local authority or other body should not utilise the Act to reduce the average rate of wages in the locality or to get their work done below the ordinary cost at the expense of wages. On the other hand, they did not want to make work under the Act too attractive, or that men should, so to speak, be permanently employed or unemployed. The solution seemed to be to pay the recognised rate per hour, and either by working reduced hours, or in other ways, to make the work less attractive than work in ordinary day life. That was a solution with which he agreed. As regarded labour bureaux, they should be general throughout the country, and he should wish that the Local Government Board might be empowered to give them a grant, because it was essential that they should be under Government control, and be on a uniform basis He did not for a moment imagine that if the Bill were passed they would have a new heaven and a new earth. However, it was the duty of the House of Commons to attempt to deal with the unemployed question, although the present attempt would not be final.
  MR. H. LAWSONsaid he thought this was ore of those Bills in regard to which the House must be asked to distinguish between spirit and matter, principle and detail. The only principle that was at issue on the Second Reading was the erection throughout London, and he hoped also in every municipal borough and in every urban district in its vicinity, of machinery to deal with the

  1159
  relief of the unemployed on the lines of the Mansion House Committee of last year. Those who were most strongly in favour of voluntary charity co-ordinated with the Poor Laws, men like Mr. Charles Booth, said it was most important that machinery should be set up for the very purpose for which this Bill was introduced. There was no other principle involved. The real defence for this Bill was that they should rescue the question of the unemployed from the chaos in which it now lay. There was not in the whole of the Metropolis a single borough council that had not for several years paid large sums for work given out at the wrong season of the year to men who cadged for it, even at the houses of the members of the council. This money was expended without supervision, principle, or control. What he was pleading for was that some principle should be laid down and some order established. What was true of London was equally true of most of the municipal districts around London. It had been stated by an hon. friend that the sum expended last year amounted to £110,000. The House was not now asked to sanction the expenditure of a rate for the relief of the unemployed. That sanction had been given long ago, and had been approved by the House. It had been sanctioned by the Local Government Board, and all they were now asked to do was to substitute some unity of purpose and some measure of supervision where at present there were none.
  The argument had been advanced that this provision had only been used to meet exceptional distress, though everyone who had studied the conditions of the unemployed knew that unemployment was chronic and perpetual, and it was perfectly certain that there would be much the Same average of unemployment every year. Therefore, when the borough councils year by year voted this money they had no doubt or scruple as to its expenditure. He thought the President of the Local Government Board said they must allow 30 per cent. for waste in using labour unfit for winter. He thought his right hon. friend under-estimated the wastage. He believed the waste was fully 50 per cent. Last year the London County Council gave
  1160
  out certain work on its parks and open spaces, and they took on any number of labourers. Money was expended for the purpose; and he thought 75 per cent. was wasted. The guardians did not control expenditure of money on relief works in any way; it was the borough councils; and they were perfectly aware that they were really paying a rate in aid just as if they were the authority under this Bill. Therefore, in accepting this machinery they were most likely to introduce economy and to do away with overlapping and waste. The system proposed was a necessity. Every country had its unemployed, and in our Colonies the problem was even more difficult than it was here. They could not get rid of it by laying down abstract formulas; they must deal with, facts as they were.
  As a London Member, he took very serious objection to the position in which they would be left if the Bill passed as it now stood. London would be a sort of national doss-house. Therefore, in order to safeguard municipal interests, this machinery ought to be made general else there would be a far more lamentable march of the unemployed to London than that which recently took place. He hoped there would he another Amendment in respect of machinery. Whatever the House might think as to the necessity of getting some unity of control, it did not want another staff of officers, and therefore, so far as they were concerned, he trusted advantage would be taken of existing machinery, otherwise the whole of the halfpenny rate allowed would be paid in salaries to officers and in equipping new authorities who were not wanted. Great care would have to be taken to assure the public of this; otherwise he did not think they would be able to rely on public charity. Money would not flow into those newly-constituted bodies from benevolent persons unless they were sure that it went to the unemployed and not in salaries.
  Another point was that under this Bill boroughs would be able to borrow money to establish farm colonies. That was the only purpose for which money could be borrowed, but it should be strictly limited and defined. Personally, he did not believe that farm colonies

  1161
  would be of the smallest use except as schools of preparation for a colonial life. It was no good to send an artisan or a clerk to a farm colony—the men who kept their heads above water during the summer and were then sent to a farm colony during the winter. The predecessor of the President of the Local Government Board obtained a Report as to the labour colonies in Holland. He read that Report; and all it proved was that they had got the same evils as existed among our own workers. There were men there who came year after year, the in-and-outs of the poorhouse. We did not want that system in this country. It was useless to raise a new class of unemployed who would go from county to county during the summer, and then be drafted off to a farm colony in winter. Such men would do a certain minimum of work, but would learn nothing. German experience proved the same. It should be remembered that as a rule a man was sent there at a time of the year when, unless he went there by way of training or sifting, he could learn very little of agricultural pursuits. That being so, he hoped these proposals in respect of farm colonies would be hedged about with the strictest of provisions. In fact, that was what this Bill required. If they were to set up machinery by statute, they must fence it in carefully, and if it was fenced in with sufficient care there was not much danger to the community involved.
  In respect of residence, he understood that the President of the Local Government Board was willing to take precautions that relief should not be given to any except those who were genuinely located in the particular area, but why should he not adopt at once what was under the law of settlement termed the status of irremovability, that was to say, for one year? While venturing to make these remarks, he supported the Bill in principle, but they had got to guard against these armies of unemployed being attracted to London, where they would be a common danger and a common nuisance, and where there would be no adequate means of relieving them. Cobbet spoke of London as being a wen, which drew the life-blood of the people to it. They did not want London to become a
  1162
  wen drawing life-blood of a different kind With these precautions, he believed this measure might induce a certain amount of uniformity of practice and unity of purpose which were absent from the existing condition of things.
  MR. BROADHURSTreminded the House that the hon. Baronet the Member for North Islington gave utterance to similar fears and lamentations as those which had marked his speech that afternoon on the occasion of the introduction of the Free Education Bill some years before. He moved an Amendment then and would very likely have brought about the defeat of a Conservative Government had it not been that the Liberal Opposition came to the rescue. The House, therefore, need not be seriously alarmed by his predictions of evil on this occasion. He agreed with some of the hon. Baronet's remarks on the subject of temperance and thrift; but he did not think any Member should set himself up as a prophet on the point whether unemployment was likely to increase or decrease. All hoped that profitable employment would become more general, although it was no use ignoring the fact that the increase of machinery must inevitably tend to displace labour, and especially unskilled labour. Recently, he attended a great meeting of the unemployed in Leicester, nearly the whole of those men were unskilled workmen. Ninety-five per cent. of them were perfectly capable, and men who would try to keep employment if they had the opportunity. They were certainly not loafers, and lie did not approve of the march of the Leicester men to London, and he used what little influence he had in order to prevent it. He did not think that any good could come of it, and he did not see that any great benefit had resulted to them in consequence of it. However, the men themselves were worthy of every consideration and assistance which could be given them by a measure such as that before the House.
  Anything he might have to say about this Bill was of a friendly character. He should support it although he would have to submit certain Amendments at the Bequest of the local authority of Leicester. His chief reason for supporting the Bill

  1163
  was that there were and always would be a large number of men out of employment, and they could not be allowed to starve. There were three alternatives, that of public charity by a system like that of the Charity Organisation Society; that of Poor Law relief, which was degrading and which was harmful to the country and the people who received it; or there was relief based on the principle of this measure, to assist men, to help to provide employment, profitable employment, which should be beneficial to the community. In so far as this Bill aimed at that end it was a good Bill and one which ought to be supported by the House. He hoped, therefore, it would receive a Second Reading that day, and that the Government would not be deterred by any seeming opposition from forcing it through Committee and passing it into law this year.
  He now wished to make a few observations which had been suggested to him by the local authorities of Leicester and with which he quite agreed. The borough of Leicester had had a very large experience, extending over a number of years, in dealing with large bodies of unemployed, and in their judgment the central board set up by the Bill should, consist really of the members of the town council, and that the town council should call in the assistance of one or two guardians and have the power to co-opt other persons whom they might think desirable to serve on such board, for the reason that there could be no workman in Leicester who had resided in Leicester for a year or two but what some member of the town council could ascertain his merits in a few hours, and when anyone came to the board for employment, his character, history, and antecedents could be quickly and readily ascertained. He could then be dealt with much more easily and effectively on his merits by the town council than he could by a central board who would have to find their way about the question, and who would have, the great body of them, no particular training in these matters and would therefore not be so capable of dealing with them as members of the town council. He understood the right hon. Gentleman to agree.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid the constitution of such a body would be very much the same as was proposed under the Bill. The proposal of the Bill was that town councils and guardians should co-opt members.
  MR. BROADHURSTpointed out that the body proposed by the Bill would work independently of the town council. That was the point of difference. Here would be an independent body, authorised to issue precepts on the town council for the levying of a rate; the town council as a body would be unable to refuse the precept, and would have practically no control over it. That was an important matter to a great industrial community. Then he understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that ho would insert a clause requiring a year's residence to qualify for assistance.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I did not say I would insert a clause, but that it might be dealt with in the regulations.
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid the local authority of Leicester were in favour of inserting a two years qualification in the Bill itself. It was far better that the main principles governing the scheme should be laid down by the Bill than by the regulations. They were also strongly of opinion that the machinery of the Bill should be made compulsory in all districts, and that county councils should have the same obligation to provide within their areas as rested upon boroughs to provide in theirs, the fear being that otherwise there would be a constant migration from county to borough districts of this class of workmen to secure themselves against want. Just as London Members were anxious to guard against the Metropolis becoming the national ''doss-house," so the provincial boroughs were anxious that their districts should not become county "doss-houses." Further, the orders of the Local Government Board, if they could not insist upon its being done, should at any rate appeal to all local authorities to co-operate in this matter. Co-operation meant less expenditure and greater efficiency. That was why borough councils were against the proposed independent central authority. Such a body would naturally appoint

  1165
  officials, want office accommodation, and set up another system of government within the municipal area, whereas if the municipality had the control and management, few, if any, additional officers would be necessary, and in most cases office accommodation would be found in the existing municipal buildings.
  The Leicester local authorities were strongly in favour of making the charge under the Bill national and not local, as the work was one affecting the nation as a whole. Voluntary contributions in aid of rates were not to be expected if people had to pay a rate for the same purpose. The proposal was a reasonable one, and ho hoped it would receive favourable consideration. Some of the suggestions he had made would be put forward as Amendments in Committee; in any case, as much of the Bill as could be got would be welcomed, although he hoped the measure would be improved before it went to another place. The Government had shown some courage in introducing such a measure, it showed that the nation, was recognising more and more its obligations to the less fortunate members of the community, who suffered so much from displacement by machinery and other causes, and he hoped the Bill would be passed into law before the session ended.
  MR. CRIPPSsaid he could not agree with the hon. Member for Mile End when he said that this was not a Bill which introduced a new principle. He did not agree with the statement that this measure merely systematised existing powers so that they might be exercised in a more efficient manner. If that had been the only effect of this Bill there would have been no opposition to it. At the present time assistance could only be given to the unemployed either by the guardians or by the local authorities. As far as the guardians were concerned, they had no power to find employment or to grant assistance except the person who applied was destitute, and so far as employment was concerned they had no discretion whatever. Therefore they might put on one side any notion that the guardians had any power which was proposed to be given under this Bill. Local authorities at
  1166
  the present time had no statutory power or right whatever to find employment for men out of employment. [An HON. MEMBER: But they do it now.] Yes, but they only did it by increasing the number of their employees during times of distress, and they could only give people employment in connection with the public works which they had to carry out, and they had no right to employ men except under the ordinary industrial conditions.
  He did not think there was any doubt whatever that this Bill introduced for the first time an extremely important principle which would have most wide and far-reaching consequences. Whether this Bill would tend to demoralise the working class or whether it would improve their moral and social condition was certainly a matter for argument. He hoped that hon. Members would not be deluded by what the President of the Local Government Board had put forward, viz., that this Bill did not introduce a new principle but simply systematised powers which local authorities already possessed under the direction of the Local Government Board. He joined issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that point. He wished to argue the point whether the conditions ought to be altered in the extremely important particulars proposed under this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had alluded to the failure of the existing local authorities to it deal with this question, and he assumed that by constituting new authorities less adapted to deal with these matters and with less knowledge, they would be able to create a new heaven and earth and get rid of all the failures of the past. Could anything be more absurd? The Poor Law Commissioners had declared that there was scarcely a statute connected with the administration of the Poor Law which had produced the effect intended by the legislation, but, on the contrary, they had created more evils and aggravated those which they were intended to relieve. The right hon. Gentleman had ridiculed the way in which the local authorities had conducted their administration, and then, instead of moving the rejection of this Bill, he went on to say that this measure introduced the Local Government Board and two new authorities who knew less

  1167
  about the subject than any existing authority, and in this way they were told that a new era would arise. Under this Bill not only were they not likely to achieve the result the right hon. Gentleman anticipated, but they would be far more likely to emphasise those deeply-seated social evils which were connected with want of employment in this country, and it was upon that topic that he wished to say why he opposed this Bill.
  The borough council of the district which he represented were of opinion that the whole principle of this measure was to create a class of paupers who would be free from the stigma of pauperism, and they believed that the measure would undermine the self-reliance of the working classes. Personally, he had had a large experience in Poor Law matters, and he could hardly conceive a Bill which would do more harm in its ultimate effect to the working classes. They had been told that this was merely a measure to enable them to make the best of the machinery now in existence, and in this way they were told that in future everything would be done for the benefit of the working classes. He thought they ought to emphasise the duties of the working classes as well as their rights. He was opposed to all those class measures of which this was a bad illustration, which were constantly telling the working classes of the country that they had rights apart from duties, and that those who were out of employment were entitled to live upon those who were working. They were telling the thriftless that they had a right to live at the expense of the thrifty and industrious, who in many cases were not better off than themselves. Take, for instance, the underlying principle of this Bill. It could not be denied that if this Bill was passed, Parliament would recognise for the first time what might be called the right of employment in all the working classes of this country, and in saying this he did not wish to use the term "working classes" in any special sense. That was a fallacy, because no such right existed. There was no right to claim against the community in cases of want of employment. But he went beyond that. They could not imagine that they had got an organisation called "society" with infinite funds which might
  1168
  be squandered, and which would always be sufficient for providing employment for those who were out of work, or for keeping those who would not work. There was no such right. No man who would not work had a right to live at the expense of those who did.
  What was it they found in this Bill? Rival Poor Law authorities were to be created, and he asked the House to consider what that meant. There were now the guardians, the borough councils, and the county councils, and if there was one matter which really required reorganisation and amendment in regard to our local government system, it was that the present system should be simplified instead of having new boards added to those which we already had. What was proposed by this Bill was not one new authority but two. There was the local authority, and what was called the central authority. He would ask anyone with experience in local administration whether this would not create a greater evil by causing more extravagance for clerks, servants, and officials, thereby increasing the burden on the over-rated districts in order to relieve a few unemployed workmen in the course of the year? The officialism alone of this Bill would constitute an expense to the country entirely out of proportion to the duties which would be cast on the new authorities. He had a further strong objection to the measure. These new authorities were to take certain cases away from the Poor Law authorities. In other words, they were going to have competition between the authorities in regard to the particular form of relief to be given. Could anything be worse than that?
  MR. BROADHURST: The hon. and learned Member seems to think that I am in favour of the creation of new authorities.
  MR. CRIPPSsaid he was dealing with the Bill as it stood. The creation of a new authority was quite a different matter from the giving of additional powers to existing local authorities. It seemed to him that an essential portion of the Bill was the creation in every district of a local authority which would have either nothing to do because the

  1169
  number of unemployed would be very small, or else be overwhelmed because of the demoralising tendencies which were to be introduced.
  They were always speaking in this House in the abstract of economy. So long ago as 1883 the then President of the Local Government Board said that the pressure of the rates was so great that they were bringing down working men to the condition of paupers, and pressing so hardly on small manufacturers that they were no longer able to hold their own. Since 1883 the burden had greatly increased, and he protested in the strongest possible manner against a Bill of this sort which would put an additional burden on the ratepayers, who had never been consulted and know nothing at all about the Bill. Once set this Bill agoing, and it would not be a½d. or a 1d., but 6d., 1s., or 1s. 6d. which would be required. Although there was a great deal to be said against making this a national charge, that would certainly be preferable to making it a local charge. The Commission which inquired into the incidence of local taxation pointed out that the Poor Law expenditure under existing conditions had now become in the nature of a national charge. If the House was going to create a new principle of this kind it ought to find the money, and not shirk its responsibility by putting the burden on the over-burdened ratepayers in the various districts. A penny per £ on the local rates only produced £800,000, but a 1d. on the income-tax produced £2,500,000. Therefore, in putting a charge of this kind on the local ratepayers they were relieving two-thirds of the wealth of the country of a charge which it ought to bear if it was to be made at all.
  There was one other matter of real importance as regarded the demoralising tendency of the Bill. He insisted that the Bill as introduced would increase the tendency in the worst possible manner of the rural population to drift into the towns. What was wanted was some reform which would keep the labouring classes in the country districts. No one was a keener agitator for that than he was, because he believed that this drift of the rural population to the towns was one of the crying evils of the day, and must affect the whole
  1170
  future of the people of this country. By this Bill London was to be made the dumping ground for all the waifs and strays of the country; and if the system was to be extended to the county boroughs, it would be impossible to conceive a more demoralising scheme as regarded the country districts. What was the remedy? The remedy which he, and those who thought with him, proposed, was so to improve their industrial organisation that they could keep their people fairly provided with employment in the country districts. Instead of that the Government invented this claptrap remedy which, so far from really dealing with the evil, tended to increase the demoralisation and overcrowding in the great towns. Ha would like anyone to travel through the country districts in this land, and through the country districts in France, and see what a difference there was between the two. The moral to be deduced was that this Bill was a long step in the direction of pauperism. For his own part, there was nothing so sad as to see any man wishing to obtain employment and not able to get it; but were they likely to decrease the number of those unfortunates by the proposals in the present Bill? He had come to the conclusion that the tendency of these proposals would be rather to increase them. The Bill was a claptrap palliative. No graver matter could be brought before the House, and he thought it his absolute duty to oppose to the utmost this demoralising Bill which the Government had introduced.
  MR. KEIR HARDIEsaid that one phrase which had fallen from the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down was significant of the opposition with which this modest measure was to be met by some of its opponents. The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the Bill as a claptrap palliative, and showed in how small a way it touched the difficulties of the situation, and that, therefore, it did not deserve the approbation of the House. If he might be allowed, without offence, he should like to express his personal satisfaction that a Government had at length arisen which was prepared to make the unemployed question a matter of serious discussion in the House. It

  1171
  afforded him and his colleagues of the Labour Party considerable satisfaction to find that such was the case. After listening to the cheers from the opposite side of the House which greeted the speech of the hon. Member for North Islington, he admitted that it said a great deal for the courage of the President of the Local Government Board that he had brought this measure to its Second Reading. [Ironical cheers.] He wished to give credit where credit was due. He would like also to express what he knew was a very general feeling outside that House amongst those who were trying to find some helpful solution of this difficulty—a very strong and high sense of appreciation of the right hon. Gentleman who was now Chief Secretary for Ireland, in having, practically on his own initiative, launched a scheme upon London which this Bill was about to legalise and establish, he hoped, all over the country. The arguments against the Bill had been more entertaining than convincing. When listening to the hon. Member for North Islington resurrecting bygone methods of dealing with labour problems, he was reminded of Old Mortality re cutting the inscriptions on the tombstones of dead and gone political systems. He thought none the worse of the hon. Member for having the courage of his convictions; but he hoped that on this occasion there would be a sound of weeping in the division lobbies.
  It had been said by the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite that this Bill introduced a new principle, viz., that it conferred power on local authorities to find employment for the unemployed and to pay them wages. The hon. and learned Member emphasised the point and declared that the local boards of guardians at the present time had no power to authorise the spending of a single penny of the rates for that purpose. With all respect to the learning of the hon. and learned Gentleman, he submitted that he was wrong. He was sure that the President of the Local Government Board would agree with him that at the present time boards of guardians could, with the consent of the Local Government Board, acquire land for the express purpose of setting the unemployed
  1172
  to work and pay them wages. These powers had existed in England since the days of Elizabeth. He held that the Poor Law of England was originally intended not to provide relief for the destitute. That was done by the Church as part of its duties. The Poor Law was established to create a new authority, as was now being done by this Bill, and to confer on that authority power to acquire land, to erect workshops, to set the able-bodied to work, and to pay them wages. Those powers had never been repealed and were still capable of being put into force. Therefore, it was a mistake to say that this Bill established a new principle. In providing work by law for the workless they were telling the thriftless that they must work if they wanted to live, and not, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stretford Division said, tell them they might live on their fellows. As for the men who would not work, he entirely agreed with St. Paul's doctrine, and if it could be applied to the Park Lane end of London there would not be so much need for applying it to the East End.
  So far from the Bill acting as a magnet to draw the people from the country to the large centres of population, he believed it would operate in a contrary direction and open up avenues whereby the workless man in the city could find his way back to the country. Were it otherwise he would most strenuously oppose the measure. The whole trouble was that the country was being drained to the centres of population. He agreed with the Member for North Islington that clerks had a bard struggle to live. But that was because they were not paid a reasonable wage. To sweat clerks and then to protest against anything being done to help them was not the way to encourage these men to rely upon self-help. One statement of the President of the Local Government Board which was cheered on the Opposition side was that the Bill was not intended to apply to loafers and wasters. It was meant for the honest respectable man who could not find employment. At one time he feared that an attempt was being made to deal with the tramp and the loafer. If that had been done it would still leave

  1173
  the root of the evil untouched. It was because the Bill aimed at a genuine development, arid strove to prevent decent fellows from being driven into the gutter that it was worth support from all quarters of the House.
  Respecting the present system of emigration it was a scandal that England had no better use for her sons than to banish them across the sea to grow food to send home to help the people in this country. He attended a Mansion House meeting the other day, and an Archbishop or a Bishop made a speech which clearly implied that Divine Providence did not understand His business, that in other parts of the world was waste land, which by the blessing of God belonged to England, and that idle men should be sent to idle land. Those who were born in England should not be called upon to leave so long as one rood of it lay waste and untilled. He hoped that one of the results of this Bill would be an ultimate enlargement of its scope whereby men who had been taken from the towns would be settled permanently upon the land, and grow food for the people of England from English soil. Some years ago the Poplar Board of Guardians accepted the offer of a farm in Essex in order to try the experiment of getting people back to the land. Able-bodied paupers were to be sent down to the farm to work there at no wages and to be treated as if they were in the workhouse so far as any yield from their labour was concerned. Yet during the time that farm colony had been in operation 400 men had been drafted down from the Poplar district, and out of that number only seven had proved to be people who would not work. A large proportion of them had been reclaimed, and had found employment, while a large batch had been sent across to Canada as desirable emigrants. If that could be done with material in the workhouse, already degraded and demoralised, what might not be done with those men who were taken in hand before they were pauperised and demoralised and given this opportunity? In the report of the Central Committee of the Unemployed Fund there was some very interesting information of another colony at Hollesley Bay, controlled by
  1174
  that committee. In that case hundreds of men were sent down to do drainage and road work, to reclaim heath land, to construct sea walls, to make bricks, and to make tables and chairs and other articles, and to do painting. The cost was 20s. 6d., for every family relieved. As soon as a man was sent down to the colony his wife received 10s. a week, with 2s. for the first child, 1s. 6d. for the second, and 1s. for each remaining child. The average allowance to each wife was 14s. 6d., and the cost of the food of the man was 6s., against which there was a full week's work given by the man. The relief of these men, therefore, by finding them work cost nothing. They could earn their own cost, and possibly leave a surplus to assist in carrying on the colonies.
  He trusted that no one would vote against the Bill because of any danger of making the nation bankrupt. There was no reason, however, why grants should not be made from the national Exchequer if the system did not pay expenses. Unemployment was national in scope, and should really be a a national charge. He resented the statement that all the evils that fell upon the workmen were the outcome of improvidence. If they were all teetotalers to-morrow, and embodied all the virtues and elements of thrift, the unemployed question would still be present.
  And, it being after half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

  EVENING SITTING.

    UNEMPLOYED WORKMEN BILL.
    Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment to Question [20th June], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    Which Amendment was,
    "To leave oat all the words after the word 'That,' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, 'it is most inexpedient for the national welfare, contrary to the beat interests of the State, and especially detrimental to the poor themselves, by tending to reduce their self-reliance and independence, that a system of relief, whether supported by municipal rates

    1175
    or Imperial taxation, be established in addition to and outside the existing Poor Law;'"—(Sir George Bartley.)
    Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    MR. KEIR HARDIE,continuing his speech, said he now had one or two criticisms to make with regard to the Bill itself, and from the tone of his observations hitherto the President of the Board of Trade would see that he did not make them in any carping or hostile spirit. Although there was much to be said for the appointment of a central board to carry out the provisions of this Bill, he hoped he had gathered from the Government that afternoon that some understanding might yet be arrived at whereby it would not be compulsory to establish these new authorities all over the country. In a city like London, where the County Council had its hands already full of work, a new authority might be necessary; it would be a mistake to impose upon the County Council the duty of carrying out the provisions of this Bill. But that remark only applied to London; it did not apply to the rest of the country, where everybody would feel averse to the creation of a new set of officials which would be necessary if the Bill passed in its present form. They did not wish to multiply officials except in case of dire necessity, and therefore he hoped, if the special authority idea was to be maintained, that the suggestions made by one or two hon. Gentlemen would be considered, namely, that in connection with the new authority existing officials, such as town clerks, etc., should be utilised as far as possible in preference to creating brand-new officials. The Bill proposed that in country areas its provisions might be called into force by a resolution passed by the board of guardians or the local authority for that area, but that in those places where no such resolution was carried, and where the full provisions of the Bill were not called into being, a special committee of the county council should be required to be appointed to establish registers and so forth. That seemed to
    1176
    him to point the way in which the necessity of creating a new authority might be avoided. If a committee of a county council was able to administer any portion of the Bill without a new authority being created, an elaboration of that idea would enable the same committee to carry out the full provisions of the Bill wherever it was thought desirable to do so. This arrangement applied also to county boroughs and district councils. In his opinion in the case of a town, a unit in itself, and not like London an aggregation of units, it would be a mistake to create these new authorities. A borough council was quite competent, and would be undoubtedly willing to exercise through a committee of its own all the powers conferred on it under this Bill. If that were done it would remove one of the objections to this measure, held very strongly by a good many councils and other people who desired to see the Bill passed, but who objected strongly, and in his opinion rightly, to the creation of anything like a new set of officials.
    With regard to London itself the powers of the Bill might be vested in the borough councils, leaving the central authority to be created from representatives of those councils and of the County Council, with such co-opted members as might be agreed upon, because so far as London was concerned it was desirable that there should be a special authority which should be charged with the responsibility and the duty of putting the provisions of the Bill into operation. To make the county of London a model on which to build up new central bodies throughout the country was a mistake, and he hoped that upon this point also the President of the Local Government Board would keep an open mind. So far as London was concerned, it would, in his opinion, be a mistake and n great disadvantage to the proper working of the Bill if the County Council area, and not the Metropolitan Police area, was taken as the area. If the Metropolitan Police area was taken, the accessible bounds for the purposes of the Bill would be considerably enhanced, and such poor districts as South West Ham, which in this respect was one of the worst boroughs in England,

    1177
    with a large proportion of unemployed and a low rateable valuation, Would be able to cope more effectively with its responsibility. If West Ham had to depend upon itself to carry out the provisions of this Bill, it would immediately break down, but if, on the other hand, it was made part of the London area, then the outlying residential areas where the well-to-do mostly went to live, would be brought within the rating area and the cost of providing for the unemployed would be spread over a much wider area. A penny rate struck over the Metropolitan Police area would yield £30,000 a year more than if the London County Council area were taken as the unit.
    He was pleased with the frank manner in which the President of the Board of Trade had explained the meaning of that section of the clause dealing with wages. The right hon. Gentleman had pointed out that it was not intended that the wages paid were to be under the current and fair rate, but that the total remuneration was to be less than would be earned by an ordinary workman under ordinary conditions. But if that were so, the clause as it stood would defeat that idea. The clause said that the total remuneration for any temporary work should be less than that earned by unskilled labour. Last winter the London Central Committee employed a considerable number of men in painting markets and doing certain classes of skilled work on the lines arranged by this Bill, but had this Bill been in force last winter those men would have come under the clause. Those men were paid the union rate of wages throughout, but had this Bill been law the wages earned by those men would have been confined to something under those earned by unskilled labour under ordinary conditions. That was a very serious thing and one which he ho pad the President of the Local Government Board would consider and pat right, because it could not for a moment be contended that simply because skilled work was done at a time of stress, out of season, in order to give employment to the unemployed, the wages of the persons doing that work should be less than those of unskilled labour. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would be prepared to
    1178
    accept an Amendment that the whole of that portion of the clause which dealt with wages should come out of the Bill. There was no reason whatever for its being in the Bill, and it only milled the people. He, therefore, hoped that that portion of the clause might be deleted in order that there might be no misconception of what the intention or the meaning of the Government was. After all, when the Bill became law, it would not be the intention of the Government, nor the speeches of the President of the Local Government Board, which would be held to show the meaning of the Act, but the words of the Act itself, and if this sub-section were left in it would be a very dangerous thing indeed, and might lead to great difficulties. Subsection 6 of Clause 1 should also be varied to some extent, because it was never intended that the provisions of this Bill should allow private employment to be subsidised by a public authority That sub-clause was capable of that interpretation, however, and that being so, it would be much better if that also were deleted. Failing the deletion of those two sub-sections he trusted that such Amendments would be accepted as would make it impossible for any of the dangers which he had indicated to arise.
    There was one other point. The Bill said relief was not to be given in more than two successive years to one man. That required to be amended in some form or other; he quite agreed that there should be a limit to the period during which one could be a member of a labour colony or receive temporary work from other bodies established, but suppose the case of a man employed in December last year and January this year, that man would be employed during two years, and, therefore, would be disqualified from receiving further employment. Such a thing was out of the question, and some Amendment to that clause was required. Everyone was agreed as to the desirability of establishing labour bureaux, but he hoped that work would be undertaken upon some system. It was not enough to establish bureaux for the unemployed or labour exchanges all over the country. Unless they were co-ordinated they would lose much of their usefulness. In many parts of Germany the labour bureaux system

    1179
    had been brought to the perfection of a fine art. By means of telephones and the Press the whole kingdom was posted up, and men were put into possession of information as to those employers who required workmen of their class, and they were even assisted from one place to another when work had been found for them. Something of that kind required to be done under this Bill. He knew, of course, there was a possibility of these bureaux being used as blackleg agencies where an employer might be enabled to obtain labour cheap and without difficulty, under the full protection of the Government, and something required to be done to safeguard these institutions from being prostituted in that way. Much had been said about the danger of this Bill doing too much for the working classes and of its being taken advantage of by the working classes, but the labour bureaux were far more likely to be abused by the employers than the working classes.
    He trusted the Government would continue to do as they had hitherto done, steer an even keel between the opposition on both sides and pilot this measure safely into the harbour of Government legislation. A small measure it might be, but it would mean much to hundreds of thousands of men next winter and the winters to follow. Even at the present season, with the prospects of good trade, there were 5 per cent. of trades unionists on the unemployed benefit funds. During the summer months people managed to get a living somehow, but the dark dreary days of winter would come again, and then the number of the unemployed was always greater than in summer. For three winters in succession municipalities and charitable agencies had been strained to their utmost to tide the unemployed over their difficulties, and the House should remember that municipalities, though they might do it occasionally, could not go on for ever providing relief works for the unemployed. It had been stated that municipalities had a free hand for dealing with the unemployed. Such talk was misleading. The powers of the guardians were limited enough, but those of the municipalities were nil. The only power they had was to do certain work which might give employment
    1180
    to some of the unemployed. Seeing that existing methods were practically exhausted it was doubly incumbent upon the House to back up the Government measure, in order that when winter came there should be machinery in existence for lightening to some extent the burden which fell upon decent men who were unable to find employment. When they realised what want of employment for weeks and months meant to men, women, and children, not only in the present but in the future, surely hon. Members should waive all preconceived theories spun out of the imagination of men who had been dead and gone hundreds of years. He, at any rate, would not take the responsibility, by act, word, or vote, of doing anything to hinder the passage of the Bill into law. If no provision were made for the coming winter, the cursings and groanings of the hungry and the dying, the despairing, and the suicides, might well embitter the lives of those who were responsible should they succeed in wrecking the Bill. It was only a beginning in the right direction, but still it was a beginning, and he hoped that the Government would stand by the position they had taken up, boldly declaring that having set their hands to this work of healing one of the gravest social sores in English political life they would not be daunted by opposition, but would see to it that the Bill was placed on the Statute-book before the session closed.
    SIR FRANCIS POWELLsaid that in considering this subject he could not regard the present as a crisis. He could remember the time when combing machines were invented, one machine doing the work of eighty men, when power looms supplanted the hand-loom weaver, and the great cotton famine in Lancashire, and he was convinced there was no comparison between the difficulties of the present time and those which had then to be faced. But the difficulties of those days were overcome without any changes of a revolutionary character, and he believed that the difficulties of to-day could be surmounted with a similar absence of recourse to perilous experiments. He regretted that the intention of the Government to apply the Bill to county boroughs was not made clear at an earlier stage. During

    1181
    the recess he had been in communication with the authorities of Bradford and Wigan, and had told them that as he understood the Bill it was practically a London Bill, though it was extremely possible that attempts would be made to extend it to the country generally.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURpointed out that Clause 2 clearly showed that the Bill was compulsory upon every county borough unless it made application to the Local Government Board for a postponement, and the Board granted such a postponement.
    SIR FRANCIS POWELLagreed that that was the effect of the clause, but there had doubtless been widespread misapprehension on the point. He certainly did not regard with satisfaction the enormous powers which were given by the Bill to the Local Government Board to make Orders and regulations without having to come to Parliament. He never knew a Government which did not greatly love the system of proceeding by the system of Orders and regulations. The system doubtless had its proper place and value, but he thought the House of Commons ought to regard the granting of such powers with great jealousy, and insist upon Bills being made as wide and comprehensive as circumstances would admit. There was no doubt that in the course of years, possibly a very few years, this Bill would lead to great developments, and therefore not only the actual text of the measure should be considered, but also the modifications or extensions which were almost inevitable in the future. He regretted the creation of another authority. We already had a surfeit of authorities, and as one who had had considerable experience of the administration of the Poor Law he believed the existing methods of inquiry and existing machinery were sufficient for the purpose.
    The House should note one great difference between the Poor Law authority and the proposed new authority—that the great object of the Poor Law was to use every legitimate means of persuasion to induce those in receipt of relief to help themselves in other ways, and cease to be a burden on the rates, while he was
    1182
    afraid that the tendency of this legislation would be to encourage those who availed of it to continue in the employment of the local authority. The Bill, in fact, established and endowed a new dependent class of the community, and that was a departure, he thought, which was fraught with grave perils to the social system. If the Bill was to be really effective the work given must be work which would not otherwise be done, because if it were not so it would be simply change of employment and not new employment. That constituted a difficulty which had already been experienced, and he had in mind a large and progressive borough where there had been great difficulty in finding such employment by way of public works constructed out of rates. The Government desired to provide continuous labour. His curiosity was as to where the "continuous" labour was to end. If it was never to end it would not touch the unemployed, as the new authority would merely have a group of workpeople permanently in its employ just like any other employer of labour.
    One great difficulty was the very feeble financial support which the Bill ha 1. For instance, the borough of Bradford during the winter expended £17,000 in works, whereas the sum provided in the Bill wag £6,000. And what would a farm colony be to a borough with 300,000 or 400,000 inhabitants? Another point was that if there was such a thing as scarcity of work—and they all knew there was—there was also such a thing as scarcity of labour. He knew an employer of labour some of whose hands refused to work for him because they thought they could better themselves by working for the corporation on works of a semi-artificial character. There was considerable danger in the fact that the labour set up under this Bill might be a severe and, to the public, a dangerous competitor with the labour of the independent employer. Such a consideration could not be overlooked. There was also the question of the vote. He viewed with apprehension the prospect of candidates rising in the dark days of October and endeavouring to obtain votes by promises of work.
    MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON: It was done on every Unionist platform in 1895.
    SIR FRANCIS POWELL: I was never on a platform where utterance was given to such a doctrine.
    MR. KEIR HARDIE: Old-age pensions in St. George's Hall, Bradford.
    Sir FRANCIS POWELLsaid his last point was with regard to wages. It would be a serious mischief to the State if the wages and general conditions of labour obtaining for works executed under this Bill were such as to make workmen reluctant to enter the service of the private capitalist. The wage fund of the private employer was necessarily bounded by his prospect of remunerative return, but no such consideration need apply to the local authority; they could go on ns long as the ratepayers chose to grant the money, and there was no end to the mischief which might ensue. Every Member of the House would feel the deepest sympathy and compassion for the unemployed. It was impossible to pass a portion of the winter in any of our large towns without feeling such sympathy and compassion—
    MR. ARTHUR HENDERSON: Sympathy does not fill them.
    SIR FRANCIS POWELLhad no doubt that feeling was shared by the hon. Member who interrupted him. They ought not to allow their sympathy and compassion to overbear their judgment, because that would produce a worse state of affairs than that which they were now trying to remedy by legislation.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUELsaid that all the speeches in opposition to the Bill had come from the supporters of the Government, and all those in favour of it, except the speeches of the introducer and the hon. Member for Mile End, had come from that side. They accepted the principle of the Bill as an honest, though small, attempt to deal with the welter of poverty and misery that settled at the base of our social system. The causes of unemployment were two, personal and industrial. Those who were out of work through their own defects were to be rightly left to the Poor Law.
    1184
    Nobody denied that there were industrial causes for men being out of employment, wholly apart from personal causes, and the reason why he supported the principle of this Bill was because he was profoundly convinced that they would always have an unemployed problem. If they made every man in the country sober and intelligent, reformed the land laws, and reduced taxation to its lowest possible limit, if they established the system of protection which hon. Gentlemen opposite so much desired, if they were to limit the population by forbidding immigration and encouraging emigration,—every depression of trade, every invention of machinery or change of fashion would still give rise to an unemployed problem. What were they going to do under such circumstances? It had been said that this Bill was only a palliative and not a cure. He agreed that this measure was a palliative, but the unemployed problem was a disease for which there was no cure. Large numbers of men were frequently thrown out of employment through industrial causes for which the workmen could not be blamed. The great trade depression of 1893–4 came about partly through financial collapses in Australia and the Argentine, and the effects were felt in the back streets of London and Manchester amongst people who had never heard of the Argentine and who knew very little about Australia. Workmen could not be expected to make provision against such emergencies. It was the duty of society to make some effort to meet the case of those men who happened to be thrown out of work through no fault of their own. It seemed to him a monstrous thing that the State should acquiesce in the existing social system and make no effort to remedy this state of things which produced such intolerable suffering and distress in times of trade depression.
    To deal with this problem three things were essential. In the first place any scheme for coping with the unemployed problem should set up permanent machinery, and that necessity was recognised in the Bill. Then the employment provided should not be so attractive as to draw or keep men from their ordinary employment He believed

    1185
    the safeguards in the Bill, which would be enforced by the regulations of the Local Government Board, would be amply sufficient for this purpose. In the third place, the measures adopted ought to have a proper variety and elasticity. In that respect the Bill appeared to him to be defective. It only proposed labour exchanges and farm colonies, unless, indeed, local authorities received voluntary gifts, which he thought would be unlikely when we began to draw on the rates. He was glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman now the Irish Secretary had been converted to the idea of farm colonies and labour exchanges. In a debate on this subject in 1903, he used language which was not favourable to those methods.
    MR. WALTER LONGsaid the proposal in this Bill was that there should be farm colonies owned by the central authority. The proposal of which he spoke on the occasion referred to by the hon. Member for Cleveland was to substitute farm colonies all over the country for tin Poor Law system.
    MR. HERBERT SAMUELsaid that this Bill proposed to substitute farm colonies for the defects and deficiencies of the Poor Law system. The only objection, however, which he had to make to this part of the Bill was that it did not go far enough. He thought the labour exchanges would be an exceedingly useful part of the system, and although they did not create work they rendered the existing work more accessible. He thought, however, that these exchanges should be established upon an uniform system throughout the country, and they should be co-ordinated by a Central authority. There would have to be a central agency to put all these exchanges into communication with one another. He had visited a farm colony connected with Paris, and one or two in this country, and he was convinced that they were an extremely useful refuge for men in times of distress. He did not think that they would ever be self-supporting, but the result achieved was well worth the cost, and in training town men for country labour they might do some good. The measure ought to be rendered more elastic. It ought to be
    1186
    made possible for other forms of work to be put into operation for the relief of distress. Land reclamation was a case in point. Afforesation, also, might be ear-marked for the purpose of giving refuge to the unemployed in times of depression. Official inquiries had reported that large areas of waste land could be profitably planted with trees. They imported £21,000,00 worth of timber every year of a kind which could be grown in this country. France and other foreign countries had spent large sums of money upon the cultivation of trees, and had derived large profits. Private enterprise in this country was quite inadequate for this work, because the landowners had not sufficient available capital, and they could not afford to wait the time which would be necessary before they get any return for their outlay. He thought some Amendment might be inserted which would enable suitable afforestation schemes to be carried out if expert inquiry found that they were practicable.
    All the proposals of the Bill were proposals for the employment of capable and willing workers, but there still remained the problem of the incapable and the unwilling workers. The present system of Poor Law relief for such classes was quite inadequate. The incapable ought to be employed on farm colonies, and the unwilling, the wastrels, and tramps ought to be employed on penal farm colonies. This course was advocated by men in sympathy with the working classes such as General Booth, Canon Barnett, and all the Labour Members who served on the Royal Commission on Labour, and many boards of guardians had been so much impressed by the success of such schemes in Holland and Belgium that they were urging the Local Government Board to give them power to establish penal colonies in this country. He agreed that it was a pity to set up new authorities, which would only cause additional expense for both offices and officers. He hoped that the Government, in spite of the opposition from their own side, would not drop this measure.
    MR. BONDsaid that he had been struck by the paucity of substantial argument brought forward in favour of the Bill. Since it had now

    1187
    been found possible to set up machinery for dealing with crises on the spur of the moment, he did not see the necessity of setting up so dangerous a scheme as that propounded in the Bill. He was afraid that if the Bill passed, the tendency would be more and more to ignore the co-opted members of the local committees, and rely entirely upon those who came from the boards of guardians and the local authorities. Nor could he see there was any real necessity to set up permanent machinery, which meant a certain number of permanent officers and continuous expense, or to enter upon so dangerous a scheme as that proposed under the Bill merely in order to provide for contingent cases of distress, when they could practically improvise sufficiently for the purpose when occasion arose. They had the slenderest basis to go upon in determining that the formation of farm colonies was the proper way to employ funds raised from public sources. That was assuming much more than was proved. If the Bill were passed it seemed to be thought that they would get rid of the temptation on the part of local authorities to exercise their power of spending money. The Bill did not prohibit them from spending money. If it became recognised as part of our social system that the obligation did rest upon public bodies to find work for honest men out of employment and willing to take any job, the local authorities would be pressed by the committees to find work for the unemployed by doing summer jobs in the winter or substituting manual labour for what had been hitherto done by machinery, or breaking up roads which did not require to be broken up, or putting down asphalt where it did not require to be put down, or by other means which the local mind could devise to squander the ratepayers' money on unnecessary work.
    He affirmed what had been said as to the doubtfulness and danger of this measure. Whenever he saw a project described as an "honest attempt" or an "interesting experiment," or whenever he heard the expression" proper safeguard," he knew he was on dangerous ground. They were the phrases by which people disguised from themselves and others their knowledge that
    1188
    the attempt they described as "honest" was doomed to failure. When people talked about "proper safeguards" it was only an indication that they knew the measure was in itself mischievous, and the safeguards they described as "proper" absolutely sure to fail in obviating the mischief that was certain. The measure bristled with so-called safeguards. It would be utterly impossible for him to vote for it, and the utmost he could do to satisfy his feeling of Party loyalty was to abstain from voting.
    MR. WALTER LONG, said he recognised the fact that each of the hon. Members who had spoken against the Bill on this side of the House had justly claimed on his own behalf great experience in dealing with social questions, but not one of them had made any practical proposal for meeting the difficulty to be dealt with. Sympathy for the unemployed workmen had been freely expressed, and by the hon. Member for Stretford in eloquent terms, who also said that he had a remedy. After this he listened with interest to his hon. friend, thinking to heir something of a practical kind which would show that, the wrong line had been taken in October last. But what was the remedy? Such an alteration in our industrial system as would find employment for all. He entirely shared his hon. and learned friend's aspirations, but he would ask him and others who had criticised the Bill whether, if they had been at the Local Government Board last September, October, and November, they would have met those who came to the Board with a reply of that kind? It was not surprising that those who were attached to the principle of the old Poor Law should be chary of giving support to a measure they believed would be subversive of the principle followed since 1834. He would never have been responsible for the original preparation of the Bill if he had believed that it would be destructive of that administration of the Poor Law, which more than anything else had helped to build up the independence of our people. Unquestionably the reform of the Poor Law had been of the greatest value, and he would never have

    1189
    lent his assistance to a Bill that would destroy that good work. He believed precisely the reverse would be the effect of the Bill, of which his hon. friend had spoken in contemptuous terms, using the word "clap-trap." His hon. friend was not well advised in using such language in reference to an honest attempt to deal with a practical difficulty.
    The support given to the Bill by hon. gentlemen opposite had not been altogether whole-hearted; it had been often associated with suggestions going much further than the Government were prepared to go. He doubted if hon. Members who had spoken against the Bill realised the position in October and November last. In London in more than one union boards of guardians found themselves unable to cope with the difficulties presented, and from many quarters came allegations that they were face to face with a labour crisis such as had never occurred before. He did not believe that, but he was impressed with the fact that a very large number of workmen anxious for work had to face starvation or the workhouse. Was that a condition of things to be met with the reply that the Poor Law and the workhouse made sufficient remedy for the suffering existing? His hon. friend the Member for Chelsea invited the House to say that nothing should be done until the existence of an enormous class of unemployed had become permanent and continuous. Did his hon. friend mean that the old rule that prevention was better than cure should not be applied in a difficulty of this kind? Surely it was wiser to face these facts, if facts they were, and provide machinery for dealing with them, rather than wait until an evil so serious had become permanent and continuous. He did not believe that they had reached a labour crisis, but he did believe that there was a great number of people out of employment and that there would be a great many more out of employment.
    Some of the arguments used by his hon. friend who moved the rejection of the Bill were really arguments in favour of the Bill. His hon. friend said that since the passing of the Poor Law the condition of the people of this
    1190
    country had been vastly improved, and the administration of the Poor Law had been improved. He begged the House not to run away with the idea that the increase in pauperism was due to lax administration. Both in the country districts and in the town districts the administration of the Poor Law had steadily and continuously improved. It was no use falling back on the excuse that there were bad boards of guardians. Occasionally there were bad Members of Parliament. Pauperism was not due to bad administration, nor did he say that it was due alone to the difficulties with which they were specially concerned that night. But, while the strict and benevolent administration of the Poor Law which had marked the last thirty years had taught the people to look upon the Poor Law as a means of relief that was not desirable, there was a lamentable defect in the system. The Poor Law had taken charge of the aged, the infirm, and the children, but it had done nothing, and had not attempted to do anything for what he would call weekly cases. They had not done so because they could not give relief in these cases without making a man and the members of his family paupers. It was because he desired to maintain the existing Poor Law system that he supported the principle of this Bill. He asked the House to support the Bill because the guardians could not deal with these weekly cases without adding to the number of paupers men and women who should not be made paupers. After all, pauperism was not a "raw material," to use a common phrase of the day. It was a manufactured article. It was manufactured out of conditions which, he was afraid, would always in some cases obtain. No doubt, as his hon. friend the Member for North Islington had pointed out, the large consumption of drink had a great deal to do with pauperism, but there were other excesses which had contributed to pauperism. If they rejected this Bill, in every case where a man was temporarily unable to maintain himself, they must either allow him to starve or turn him into a pauper.
    SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: It is only pauperism under another name. The community gives relief.
    MR. WALTER LONGsaid that if a man, who had been maintaining his wife and family, was through no fault of his own unable to find employment, there was no alternative under the present system except starvation on the one hand, or refuse in the Poor Law on the other. He asked those who had been connected with Poor Law administration how many men and women had they known who, once having gone on the Poor Law and entered the workhouse, had been raised from that condition and again become self-supporting citizens? How could guardians help a man to become self-supporting again? What kind of work could they give him? Could there be any work which was less satisfactory and less likely to make a man become self-supporting than the stone-yard? His hon. friend who moved the Amendment spoke of the unremunerative character of the work which would be provided under a Bill of this kind, but what was the kind of work provided by local guardians? How could they provide work without competing with local industry? The result was that they had to fall back on stone-yards and similar expedients. Many a man had told him that when he entered on his career of destitution the fact that he had been put to polish the same brass knob, or to clean the same window which half-a-dozen had cleaned before, degraded him.
    Was there no justification for the steps which he took last winter to meet that difficulty? He did not admit that there was a crisis then, but there, were undoubtedly difficulties, as was shown by the figures in connection with the increase of pauperism in the country. The figures showed that there had been a great and steady increase in the number of paupers in the country since 1900. He did not take these figures as in themselves absolutely reliable, and in the first week of October he instituted confidential inquiries of his own all over the country, and the conclusion he came to was that there was a very considerable number of men ready, anxious, and willing to work, for whom no employment could be found. In London he found not only that there was an increasing number of unemployed, but that there
    1192
    was absolute chaos as to any system of dealing with the difficulty. His hon. friend the Member for Wigun, whose long experience of Poor Law admin administration entitled him to be listened to on the subject with the greatest respect, had criticised the creation of new authorities under the Bill, but he would ask what, proposal was there that could be made for dealing with the problem that did not necessarily involve the setting up of a central authority? It was the lack of centralised machinery, of the, means of testing each case, that had led to hopeless overlapping and confusion in the past. If they were not to set up a separate authority, it was impossible to avoid overlapping such as had occurred in past schemes. It had also been said the Bill was unsatisfactory because it would attract a large number of unemployed from the country districts into London, but that statement ignored the stipulation as to residence for six or twelve months. His right hon. friend would be inclined to twelve months residence; last winter the regulation was not less than six months. His right hon. friend indicated that in order to prevent anything of that kind he would be willing to consider favourably an Amendment which would put the municipal authorities of the country on all fours with the Metropolis.
    It was remarkable to find so much opposition to the principle proposed, because, after they had established their scheme in the Metropolis last year, it was gratefully received by all classes, and many municipalities made urgent appeals for similar powers. Where the area was large and the population considerable there must be a central body to lay down general principles and local bodies to distinguish between deserving and undeserving cases. He did not believe the work could be done by central bodies unassisted. He did not think hon. Gentlemen who criticised their attempt to deal with this difficulty realised the position of the Minister who was approached by municipalities who said they were face to face with the fact that their town was full of unemployed and starvation threatened men, women, and children, and that they were not prepared to stand by and see a large portion

    1193
    of their population, who were deserving, made paupers, and therefore proposed to relieve them by carrying out municipal work. There could not be a worse way of dealing with the unemployed than that, because bad value was given for the money expended. The men who acted under a municipality understood the course of employment, and whether the ordinary workman was good or bad. But if all the unemployed were to be given work without discrimination the result was sure to be unsatisfactory. Of course, there had been mistakes, but they were not due to the fact that there was a new central body, but to the fact that in the face of a sudden crisis it was necessary to call into existence a new body which had neither officers nor machinery, and which was obliged to do the best it could in a very serious condition of things. If there was a body established on the main lines of the Bill there would be machinery ready to hand before the difficulty arose. It was said that this involved great extravagance, and would add fresh burdens to the rates; but there were now being spent in London and the great municipalities vast sums of money which were spent extravagantly and without any good results to those who were employed. Once there was a body prepared with the staff and machinery he believed that the mistakes which had been committed would diminish, if not altogether disappear.
    A good deal of criticism had been addressed to the suggestion to set up farm colonies. It was a most extraordinary thing that up to the present we had no central machinery by which emigration could be organised. There was nothing but voluntary agencies. If there was a central body to deal with emigration, with power, first of all, to put men on a farm colony for a time, and then to migrate them to parts of the country where labour was wanted or to emigrate them to the Colonies, he believed it would effect a great improvement.
    To come back to what he started with, anybody who found the condition of things with which he had had to deal and was confronted with the practical difficulties of boards of guardians and local authorities all over the country, might have done better than he had, but certainly could not
    1194
    have done less, and would have felt bound to recommend that that experience should find expression in legislation. Although there had been much criticism there had been no practical suggestion for dealing with this difficulty. He was certain that it was not sufficient to tell working men who were out of employment through no fault of their own that there was for them the workhouse and the relieving officer. They believed that it was possible to organise for their temporary relief, and he also believed that it was possible without in the smallest degree weakening the foundations on which the Poor Law system stood. Unless some such reform were adopted these men would become gravely discontented. If the conditions of life in our great towns exposed the wage-earning classes to this difficulty—that at certain times, through no fault of their own, they could get no employment—and if machinery could be set up to secure that employment, it seemed no great demand to make on the country to ask for those powers. He would never have made himself responsible for the scheme of last year if he had thought it would weaken the foundations on which our Poor Law system rested. It was because he believed that it would be impossible to maintain that system without some reform of this kind that he urged the acceptance of the Bill by the House of Commons.
    MR. CROOKSsaid that personally, and he knew he was also speaking on behalf of many boards of guardians, he desired to congratulate the present President of the Local Government Board and the Chief Secretary for Ireland on their attempt to deal with this difficult problem. When the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland called a conference last year, he did not believe in it because he never thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have the courage to follow it up with a practical scheme. He did not wonder at the hon. Member for North Islington, who was an old-fashioned gentleman and represented the old system, seizing the opportunity of teaching boards of guardians to do their duty, and preaching to poor people the gospel of thrift. He wished that the hon. Member could realise that, after all, they had to deal

    1195
    with a large industrial army, and that it was the duty of the Government to keep that industrial army up to the fighting pitch.
    The Amendment spoke of the proposals of the Bill as being detrimental to the interests of the poor. Could anything be more detrimental to the poor than keeping them without food? The hon. Member for North Islington had delivered a little homily about the powers of borrowing conferred by the Bill on municipal authorities; but where was the hon. Gentleman, who was a considerable authority in banking, to get his dividends from without borrowing. Banks flourished on borrowings. It appeared to him, when the hon. Gentleman denounced borrowing, to be like Satan rebuking sin. Last winter £50,000 was spent from the Mansion House Fund, and £111,000 in providing work for the unemployed. What he wanted the House to consider was that, even if the work provided for the unemployed by the local authorities during last winter had cost 25 per cent. more than it would have cost under ordinary circumstances, it was a distinct advantage to the community to pay that 25 per cent. over and above, because otherwise these men would have come on the rates, the community would have been 60 per cent. out of pocket, and there would have been no work done at all. It had been said that the pauper was a lazy man, but lazy men were not confined to one class. They knew that there were men very well off who thought it degrading to work. He would have every man work in order to add to the wealth of the nation. Should an ordinary unemployed man be left to the tender mercies of the Poor Law when he could go into Victoria Park and work for 7d. per hour. Would they call such a man lazy? He ventured to say that there were a good any men in this country who would not go and do that work for 7d. per hour. What was wanted was to lift the people up and prevent them becoming a charge on the Poor Law. Every depression in trade left behind it a certain number of men and women who were the dregs of the community; and the moment they became associated with the Poor Law, they gradually sank in the social scale.
    1196
    The consequence was there was never any improvement in their lives. They became accustomed to the workhouse, and they did not care who knew that they were paupers. Surely it was time that an attempt should be made to prevent men and women from becoming so degraded; and he appealed to the patriotism of the House to assist in that by supporting this Bill.
    During last winter, when he broke down, and was unable to go on any longer trying to get work for poor men and women, he was lying on his bed—he lived in a narrow street twenty feet wide—and looking out of the window he saw on the opposite side of the road a man as upright as if he were in the Guards and with a soldierly bearing, wearily waiting for a chance of work. The man took out of his pocket a whistle and commenced to play. And what did they think he played? "See the conquering hero comes." [Laughter.] Hon. Members laughed, but here was one of the nation's warriors. Who was his conquering hero? Starvation! Was there to be no attempt made to keep up the manhood of such men? In the middle of last summer a man came to his door and asked him to buy a mat. He told him that he had plenty of mats, and the man replied, "For Christ's sake, buy a mat, sir. What am I to do? I have walked about all day wheeling this load of mats, and I have not taken a penny." Of course he could not resist giving the man something. They could not call that man lazy, and was nothing to be done for such men? This Bill would give them a chance of sending such men to do some useful work. There were millions of acres of land in this country I upon which men could be employed, but it had been left to an American philanthropist to buy land in this country and offer it to Poor Law guardians to make the experiment as to whether men could be made men or whether they should always remain wastrels. The board of guardians with which he was connected had been working one of these farms for nearly a year, and they were employing nearly 400 men successfully. If they could give men something useful to do, then they would take a pride in

    1197
    their work. What a delightful occupation stone-breaking and oakum-picking was for men who wanted to do useful work. It cost the ratepayers £10 a ton for picking oakum and then they had to give it away. It required more than ordinary statesmanship to organise work of that character. He thought they might have heard something more from hon. Gentlemen opposite in favour of this Bill. There was nothing a workman detested more than labour which was intended to kill time. They had, no doubt, heard of the sailor who said he would rather do anything in the world than go to sea. He was given a job wheeling stones from one side of the road to the other. He was afterwards ordered to wheel them back again, and then the sailor declared that he would sooner go to sea. Workmen hated to waste their time, and such employment as he had alluded to was simply sapping all the manhood out of the very people which they were most anxious to save. Was it not time that some attempt was made to rescue these men? At the farm he had referred to they had turned out forty men who had obtained agricultural work. Twenty-five of them had gone to Canada, and they had heard that they wore doing well. In this way they were making men of these people, and the House of Commons ought to pay some regard to preserving their manhood.
    He did not agree that all the work done by the Unemployed Committee in London last winter had been wasted energy. The central committee created by the present Chief Secretary for Ireland found themselves in possession of £40,000 subscribed by the public for the unemployed, and people complaining that they had no work; and by means of this fund they were able to provide altogether 16,000 weeks work for those out of employment. The proper time to arrange for trade depression was when everything was going on comfortably, and they ought not to wait till things were bad. He agreed that some of the money spent upon the unemployed last winter was lost, but at any rate it enabled a large number of workmen to keep their homes together. So long as men were usefully employed they became better men. They had
    1198
    been asked what they were going to do with the clerks. There were thousands of men in all big towns who from ill-health were unable to work at indoor employment. Often men were thrown out of employment through improvements in machinery. It would pay the nation to spend a little money on training the unemployed of London in agriculture on farm colonies. At present the ordinary unemployed workman of London was no use at farm work. The farmer would not be bothered with him. But if he were trained for, say, two years on a farm colony, he would become a useful agricultural labourer and thus help to supply a sore want in the country districts.
    Not long ago the London County Council invited the representatives of all the Metropolitan borough councils to a conference, and an executive committee of fifteen members presided over by the hon. Member for Battersea was appointed. This committee finally recommended the establishment of a more complete industrial organisation, and urged upon the Government the desirability of providing such an organisation throughout the country. The Bill now before the. House had met the terms of the resolution which was adopted by the London County Council. They now asked that this Bill should be made compulsory all over the country. He thought that if they insisted upon each county area dealing with its own unemployed they would prevent migration from one county to another. The late Lord Salisbury once said that it was not so much votes that the people wanted in the country as swings and roundabouts. What they wanted in the country was more life in order to attract people to the land. Here was a great opportunity for a few landlords to put up decent cottages on their land in order to attract people to the country. They should remember that the patriotism of a nation began in the kitchen where the people had their food. If the people were able to get sufficient food they would become proud of their country. He hoped the Second Reading would be carried without a division or at any rate by such a substantial majority as would encourage the Government to press the

    1199
    Bill through the House. If the measure was made compulsory throughout the country it would be the foundation of a great improvement in the condition of industrial classes.
    SIR FREDERICK BANBURYpointed out that the intention of the Bill was to give power to the new authority to deal with exceptional circumstances of distress, not to educate people so that they might earn a livelihood. He opposed the Bill because he felt that it would not only not do good, but would do harm. Not a single illustration had been adduced by hon. Members on the other side of the House who had supported the Bill of a measure identical with this which had been successful. The hon. Member for Woolwich said that ordinary work could be found for people under this Bill, that farm colonies could be started, and that millions of acres of land could be devoted to providing work for the unemployed. He would like to know what would happen to the people who were now working on that land? Ridicule had been cast upon certain Members who had opposed this Bill, and they had been accused of doing nothing but expressing their sympathy with the unemployed. He opposed this Bill not because he was out of sympathy with the unemployed, but because he thought this measure would do more harm than good. That was the reason why they were opposing this Bill. The only way to judge any such measure as this was to look back in order to see if any such measure had been introduced
    before, and what had been the result If such a Bill was likely to prevent distress, why had it not been introduced before? A measure of this kind was introduced in the days of the Ancient Romans, and it was such a measure that brought about the fall of that great Empire. Another example was what occurred in Paris in 1848. With regard to farm colonies a Report issued by the Board of Trade in 1903–4 showed that labour colonies abroad had not been successful in dealing with the unemployed question. [Cries of "Divide."] That Report was hostile to the policy which was proposed in this Bill. [Renewed cries of "Divide."] There was nothing in what had been hitherto done by the borough councils would lead men to believe that they could go to a borough council and demand work. Under this Bill first time in the history of England the principle was being established that the State should provide work for the unemployed.
    Mr. CROOKS Mr. CROOKS rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    The House divided:—Ayes, 228; Noes, 11. (Division List No. 200.)

    AYES.

    Abraham, Wm. (Cork, N. E.)

    Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

    Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. H. O.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Allhusen, Augustus Henry E.

    Arrol, Sir William

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

    Grant, Corrie

    Nannetti, Joseph P.

    Bagot, Capt. Josceline-FitzRoy

    Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

    Nolan, Col. J. P. (Galway, N.)

    Bailey, James (Walworth)

    Greene, Sir E. W. (B'ryS Edm'nds

    O'Brien, K. (Tipperary Mid.)

    Balcarres, Lord

    Guthrie, Walter Murray

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Manc'r

    Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

    O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

    Balfour, RtHnGerald W. (Leeds

    Hamilton, Marq. (L'nd'nderry)

    O'Malley, William

    Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

    Harcourt, Lewis

    O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

    Banner, John S. Harmood

    Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil

    Parrott, William

    Bathurst, Hn. Allen Benjamin

    Hare, Thomas Leigh

    Pearson, Sir Weelman D.

    Bell, Richard

    Hay, Hn. Claude George

    Peel, Hn. Wm. R. Wellesley

    Beetinck, Lord Henry C.

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Pemberton, John S. G.

    Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

    Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.

    Percy, Earl

    Bignold, Sir Arthur

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham

    Pierpoint, Robert

    Bingham, Lord

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Platt-Higgins, Frederick

    Blundell, Colonel Henry

    Higham, John Sharp

    Plummer, Sir Walter R.

    Bousfield, William Robert

    Hoare, Sir Samuel

    Pretyman, Ernest George

    Brigg, John

    Hogg, Lindsay

    Purvis, Robert

    Broadhurst, Henry

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Pym, C. Guy

    Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

    Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

    Randles, John S.

    Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

    Hornby, Sir William Henry

    Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

    Bull, William James

    Hozier, Hon. James Henry C

    Rea, Russell

    Burke, E. Haviland

    Hudson, George Bickersteth

    Renwick, George

    Burns, John

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    Richards, Thomas

    Burt, Thomas

    Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred

    Roberts, John Bryu (Eifion)

    Butcher, John George

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Robert, John H. (Denbighs)

    Buxton, N. E. (York, NR, Whitby

    Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire

    Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

    Buxton, Sydney Chas.(Poplar)

    Kearley, Hudson E.

    Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

    Caldwell, James

    Kenyon-Slaney, Rt. Hn. Col. W.

    Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

    Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

    Kerr, John

    Round, Rt. Hon. James

    Carlile, William Walter

    Keswick, William

    Runciman, Walter

    Carson, Rt. Hn. Sir Edw. H.

    Lamont, Norman

    Rutherford, John (Laneashire

    Causton, Richard Knight

    Langley, Batty

    Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool

    Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbysh.

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow

    Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Lawrence, Sir J. (Monm'th)

    Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A (Wore.

    Lawson, Hn. H. L. W. (Mile End

    Samuel, Sir H. S. (Limehouse

    Chapman, Edward

    Lawson, John Grant(Yorks NR

    Samuel, Herb. L. (Cleveland)

    Cheetham, John Frederick

    Lee, A. H. (Hants., Fareham)

    Schwann, Charles E.

    Clive, Captain Percy A.

    Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

    Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

    Leese, Sir J. F. (Accrington)

    Seely, Maj. J. E. B (Isle of Wight

    Cohen, Benjamin Lonis

    Leigh, Sir Joseph

    Shackleton, David James

    Craig, Chas. Curtis (Antrim, S.

    Levy, Maurice

    Shaw, Charles Edw (Stafford)

    Cremer, William Randal

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Crooks, William

    Llewellyn, Evan Henry

    Skewes-Cox, Thomas

    Dalrymple, Sir Charles

    Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

    Slack, John Bamford

    Davenport, William Bromley

    Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham

    Sloan, Thomas Henry

    Delany, William

    Long, Rt. Hn. W. (Bristol, S.)

    Smith, Samuel (Flint)

    Dickson, Charles Scott

    Long, Thomas

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Doogan, P. C.

    Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth

    Spear, John Ward

    Douglas, Rt. Hn. A. Akers-

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hn. Alfred

    Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

    Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark

    MacIver, David (Liverpool)

    Stanley, Rt. Hn. Lord (Lancs

    Doxford, Sir Wm. Theodore

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Sullivan, Donal

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Maconochie, A. W.

    Talbot, Lord E (Chichester)

    Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir Wm. Hart

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

    Edwards, Frank

    M'Arthur, Chas. (Liverpool)

    Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)

    Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan

    M'Crae, George

    Thornton, Percy M.

    Fellowes, Rt. Hn. Ailwyn Edw.

    M'Killop, Jas. (Stirlingshire)

    Tomkinson, James

    Fenwick, Charles

    M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

    Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

    Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Manc'r

    Majendie, James A. H.

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

    Malcolm, Ian

    Tuff, Charles

    Findlay, Alexander(Lanark NE

    Manners, Lord Cecil

    Villiers, Ernest Amherst

    Finlay, Sir. R. B. (Inv'rn'ss B'ghs

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Fisher, William Hayes

    Marks, Harry Hananel

    Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. H (Sheffield

    Flower, Sir Ernest

    Martin, Richard Biddulph

    Walker, Col. William Hall

    Forster, Henry William

    Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir Fredk. G.

    Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir Wm. H.

    Foster, P. S. (Warwick, S. W.

    Milvain, Thomas

    Warde, Colonel C. E.

    Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.

    Montagu, Hn. J. Scott (Hants.

    Welby, Lt.-Col. A. C. E (Taunton

    Galloway, William Johnson

    Morrison, James Archibald

    White, Luke (York, E.R.)

    Gardner, Ernest

    Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

    Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

    Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herb. John

    Moss, Samuel

    Whiteley, H.(Ashton und Lyne

    Gordon, Hn. J. E.(Elgin&Nairn

    Mount, William Arthur

    Williams, Osmond (Merioneth

    Gordon, Maj. Evans (Tr'H'm'ts

    Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset

    1202

    1203

    Wilson, John (Falkirk)

    Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

    Wilson, John (Glasgow)

    Younger, William

    Alexander Acland-Hood and

    Wylie, Alexander

    Yoxall, James Henry

    Viscount Valentia

    NOES.

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Legge, Col. Hn. Heneage

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R

    Coghill, Douglas Harry

    Pilkington, Colonel Richard

    Cripps, Charles Alfred

    Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

    Eve, Harry Trelawney

    Russell, T. W.

    George Bartley and Mr.

    Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

    Welby, Sir Chas. G. E. (Notts.)

    Whitmore.

    Question, "That this House do now adjourn"—(Sir A. Acland Hood)—put, and agreed to.

    Mr. GERALD BALFOURclaimed, "That the main Question be now put."

    PROTECTION OF LIFE FROM FIRE.
    Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire as to the provision of means of escape from fire in factories, workshops, laundries, offices, shops, hotels, and other buildings where persons work or live in large numbers, and to report what changes in the law are necessary for the protection of life, having special regard to the case of buildings in the occupation of more than one occupier.
    The Committee was accordingly nominated of: Mr. Arkwright, Mr. James Bailey, Mr. Brigg, Mr. Munro Ferguson, Mr. Vincent Kennedy, Mr. Malcolm, Mr. Lawson, Mr. Norman, Mr. Ridley, Mr. Soames, and Mr. Tuff.
    Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.
    Ordered, That Three be the quorum—(Sir A. Acland-Hood.)

    NEW CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Sir A. ACLAND-HOOD, Somersetshire, Wellington), in moving the adjournment of the House, said it would be necessary at the commencement of business that day (Wednesday) to move that the House do appoint a new Chairman of Ways and Means. For that purpose it would be necessary that some Vote of Supply should be the first order of the day. He would, therefore, put down Class I, Vote 12, Peterhead Harbour, which he believed was non-contentious. It was in accordance with precedent that notice should be now given that the First Lord of the Treasury would move "That Mr. Grant Lawson do take the chair." If that Resolution was carried Progress would be immediately reported, and the House would be asked to go into Committee upon the proposal for a Vote for a pension for the late Speaker. The business immediately afterwards would be the Indian Budget, and the Secretary of State would make his statement of revenue arid expenditure with the Speaker in the Chair.
    Adjourned at twenty-seven minutes after Twelve o'clock.