The Unemployed - Suggested Remedies

Transcription of article in the Primitive Methodist Magazine by Rev. H.J. Taylor

THE Fourth Commandment was intended to make men work six days a week as well as rest on the Sabbath. The problem then was that men shirked work for six days and rested on the seventh. The descendants of these people remain unto this day. But the form of the problem has changed. The main question now is, not to make men work, but to find work for those willing to do it. The problem is acute. More than eight per cent. of the members of Trades Unions are at present out of employment. The percentage is increasing. It is yet higher among the unorganised. A million and a half, it is safe to say, stand idle in the market place. They represent an average of five people each. So that over seven millions of men, women, and children are face to face with the wolf at the door.

There is, however, bad as things are, no need for panic. Conditions have been worse. They were so four years ago. They are recurrent. Many causes at home and abroad, every few years, conspire to arrest trade. It has been so in every age and in every land. But the very age of the problem should challenge our statesmanship. It is time it was solved. Experience has been long enough and bitter enough to demand a speedy and effective way out, and what is the way?

Not the gracious road of charity. Let this be said with emphasis. No nation has been more given to works of mercy than Britain. Our laws say that no man must suffer hunger.

Our Poor Law Unions have been raised at vast cost. Every period of unemployment has called forth philanthropy. Four years ago Queen Alexandra headed a relief fund of over £100,000. The unemployed are regularly helped from the national exchequer. But the problem remains unsolved. A race of mere good Samaritans will never solve it. They really perpetuate it. When they have given they believe they have done their duty and go their way. The causes of unemployment remain. When charity’s gift is spent, the hungry look up still undelivered. The Samaritan must not shut up the bowels of his compassion, but while the robbed man is being helped, the robber must be waylayed. Where charity abounds justice must abound much more exceedingly. The Kingdom of God is the welfare of men. The Kingdom of Heaven is a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Righteousness is rightness. Right relations between men. The nation a family—all men brothers, and the spirit of brotherhood reigning through all conditions. This is the goal in view and when reached, not only the problem of the unemployed, but many other difficulties will be gone.

Many lines of procedure are suggested. Influential people, possessed of vast resource, plead for a return to Protection. Prevent cheap goods, they say, from coming to our shores, and the British manufacturers will have a chance, and want of employment will cease. It sounds plausible. But it has been tried and found wanting. The “hungry forties’ are remembered, and, what is not less convincing, the countries with Protection are at this moment suffering more from want of employment than we are. This is a staggering fact. The truth is that neither Protection nor Free Trade will solve the problem.

Mr. Silvester Horne makes a wise suggestion. Let the Government immediately take over one of the great canals running through the heart of the country, nationalise it, repair its banks, deepen its bed, and prepare it for a service of swift motor barges. On each side of the canal let generous strips of land be taken to be used as agricultural holdings. Let cottages and what not be built, and so let a great line of useful industry begin. A Holland or a Denmark right through the heart of England.

This proposal, if adopted, would not only be a wise step toward further nationalisation, but would at once set thousands of unskilled labourers, agriculturists, and builders at work. This would be a great and lasting form of relief.

Then there is the Land Question. This is vital to the problem.

Ten landless men in Scotland saw an uncultivated island. Its owner would neither use nor lease it. They were idle, so was the land. They took the law into their own hands and planted two acres of potatoes on it, built huts and what not. By this time the absentee landlord heard of their invasion. He put the law into force and cleared them out, and the island lies in neglect again. This is a sample fact. Most of the land of Great Britain and Ireland is held by a few rich people. It is uncultivated. Foxes are more important than folk, and pheasants must abound if peasants perish. The earth is the landlord’s. Until the people regain their inheritance we shall not be on the highway towards solving the problem of the unemployed. Land nationalisation is essential.

But we are more than an agricultural people, we manufacture. England is a workshop for the world. We need to bring our manufacturing as well as our land under national control. We are not out of work because things are not needed. Better houses, clothes, meals, education, are in urgent demand. Nor is money scarce. We never had so much. The annual earnings work out at £213 per worker. The trouble is with distribution. This is not just. A few get more than enough, the many get the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. Of our forty-three millions, thirty-eight are in poverty. The trouble is that riches rule not righteousness. The chief question unfortunately is, not the welfare of the people but the making of wealth. Capital controls and it is in few hands, and things will not be as they ought until the people own and re-adjust the economic machine. This is the real remedy.

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1909/870