Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1223/1272 (page 1195)
    It is not, of course, suggested that the particular work heretofore done by the boys and girls, by the railway and tramway workers and by the mothers of families should be given to the particular men displaced by “ decasualisation.”” What would happen would be that each employer would so re-arrange his employment of labour as to get his work done as conveniently as before, taking on, as additional hands, the most efficient men that he could obtain. These would leave vacancies which would tend to be filled by men who would otherwise have furnished the daily recruitment of the Under-employed that now goes on; or by the younger, the more energetic of those already in that great army. It is in this way that the total number of those at present Under-employed would be reduced to the number who could get fairly continuous employment. It is not necessary to imagine that the most demoralised and deteriorated man among the casual dock labourers would be able to become either a railway signalman, a telegraph messenger, or a shirt- maker. (c) THE REGULARIZATION OF THE NaTIONAL DEMAND FoR LABOUR. We have given prominence to the Absorption of Labour by the three desirable reforms that we have just described, apart from the usual expansion of industry, because the nation cannot be expected to undertake even so great an improvement as the Suppression of Under-employment, without adequate assurance that its industry would not thereby be crippled at times by lack of hands, or that openings could be found for the Casual Labourers who would be no longer required as such. But apart from preventing the weary and demoralising aimless hunt for work, and diminishing the present “leakage ” of time between jobs, the National Labour Exchange will not prevent Unemployment, whenever the total volume of the business of the nation, and even of all the nations of the world, falls off in those periodical depressions of trade of which we have, as yet, no complete explanation. In the years 1826, 1839-42, 1847, 1857-8, 1867-9, 1878-9, 1884-7, 1892-5, 1903-5, and 1908-9 such cyclical trade depressions of general character have sent up the percentage of Unemployed workmen to three, four and even five times as many as in the better years. The proportion of Trade Union members in Unions paying Out of Work Benefit (as to whom alone there are yet any statistics), who retain their situations, _ falls from the 97 or 98 per cent. characteristic of good years, to 92 or even to 89 per cent. This means that something like a couple of hundred thousand skilled workmen in the United Kingdom find themselves, through no fault of their own, without work or wages, and unable, whatever their character or their efforts, for a prolonged period to get em- ployment. At the same time all the various grades of unskilled and general labourers find their employment more than usually intermittent, and all the evils of Under-employ- ment and of the seasonal fluctuations are intensified. The National Labour Exchange will be more than ever useful in these years of depression in demonstrating and accurately measuring the surplus of applicants over situations. But it cannot fill vacancies that do not exist. What is needed in the lean years, which we must expect to recur once or twice in every decade, though we cannot yet accurately predict their dates—what is required as much for the skilled men as for the labourers—is some means of keeping the demand for their services at a uniform level. = we fT - t jpeg * = We think that the Government can do a great deal to regularize the aggregate demand for labour as between one year and another, by a more deliberate arrangement of its orders for work of a capital nature. “Tn round numbers,” deposed our most distinguished statistician,* “ it may be estimated that 200,000 or fewer able-bodied adult males are out of work from non-seasonal causes one year with another, and have no sufficient. resources, and that this number fluctuates between 100,000 in the | best year, to 300,000 in the worst. . . . The economic and industrial problem is to re-arrange the demand for labour to the extent indicated by these numbers. . . . There is consequently a need, in the worst year, for wages to the extent of £10,000,000 to bring it to a level with the best, so far as these men are concerned ; for the whole of the last ten years £40,000,000 would have sufficed. The annual wages bill of the country is estimated at £700,000,000. . . . Is it possible for the Govern- . ment and other public bodies who employ labour in large quantities to counteract the industrial ebb and flow of demand by inducing a complementary flow and ebb; by withdrawing part of their er ee eh EL, FF ER NE a ae aaa aN Lm ame es ee ee wee ee * Mr. A. L. Bowley, Reader in Statistics, London School of Economics, University of London ; Evidence before the Commission, @. 88192, Pars. 6,9; Westminster Gazette, March 27th, 1907. 429. 7T