There is, of course, no remedy for unemployment under present economic conditions. All that can be done by the State, consistently with the private ownership of land and industrial capital, is to remedy the distress arising from unemployment, and as I write (1910) the Government are contemplating a scheme for unemployment insurance, based on contributions by men and masters, with aid from taxation. Such a scheme should be strongly supported, but there should be clarity of ideas as to what is effected by insurance. Unemployment insurance no more cures unemployment than life insurance cures death. All that is done by it is to relieve the distress caused by the unemployment. It is a great and worthy object, but the unemployed workman drawing his out-of-work pay, is still unemployed.
The Labour Party has propounded a "Right-to-Work" Bill, but this again, on examination, suggests work or maintenance, its promoters seeing clearly that economic work cannot be made to order by a State which is as poor in property as the workmen themselves. The Right-to-Work Bill is thus no more a remedy for unemployment than an insurance scheme is such a remedy.
Nor can the State, by pursuing its few public works chiefly in bad seasons, level unemployment as between good years and bad, or as between good seasons and bad. The troughs of the waves of depression are too great to be filled by such means, and they deceive themselves who think that they can rule those waves by the manipulation of Government contracts.
The Labour Exchange is a useful machine for organizing labour to meet the vicissitudes of individualistic industry. It has been described as equivalent to the organization of industry, but that is a misnomer. The organization of industry can only begin with the organization of the means of production. If we organize production we necessarily organize labour. If we enrol unemployed workmen, and move them about as pawns to suit the uneconomic conditions of unorganized capital units ("Come and tell us if you want a man;" "Come and tell us if you want a job") we may save the workman some trouble and loss of self-respect in finding new jobs, and render more tolerable his periods of idleness, but most surely we neither organize industry nor increase the volume of employment.
CHAPTER X
PART OF THEIR WAGES
IN considering the earnings, as distinguished from the rates of wages, of the manual labour classes, we have found it necessary to make an allowance for time lost through sickness and accidents. Let us now examine the available records of the industrial accidents and diseases of occupations which are part of the wages of the working classes, and at the price of which the comforts of the well-to-do are purchased.
As to persons employed in factories and workshops, we have the reports made to the inspectors under the Factory and Workshop Act of 1901. By Section 19 of the Act it is provided that where there occurs an accident which either
(a) Causes loss of life to a person employed in a factory or workshop; or
(b) Causes to a person employed in a factory or workshop such bodily injury as to prevent him on any one of the three working days next after the occurrence of the accident from being employed for five hours on his ordinary work, written notice shall forthwith be sent to the factory inspector for the district.