If public bodies are to employ more labour, when
labour is excessive, and pay a wage which shall be above the market
price, it must be clearly understood that the portion of the wages which
represents the "uncommercial" aspect of the contract is just as much
public charity as the half-crown paid as out-door relief under the
present Poor Law. Lastly, the establishment of State or municipal
workshops for the "unemployed" has no economic connection with the
"socialist" policy, by which the State or municipality should assume
control and management of railways, mines, gas-works, tramways, and
other works into which the element of monopoly enters. Such a
"socialist" policy, if carried out, would not directly afford any relief
to the unemployed. For, in the first place, the labour employed in these
new public departments would be chiefly skilled, and not unskilled.
Moreover, so far as the condition of the "workers" was concerned, the
nationalization, or municipalization of these works would not imply any
increased demand for labour, but merely the transfer of a number of
employes from private to the public service. The public control of
departments of industry, which are now in private hands, would not, so
long as it was conducted on a commercial footing in the public interest,
furnish either direct, or indirect, relief to "the unemployed." A
reduction of hours of labour in the case of workers transferred to the
public service, might afford employment to an increased number of
skilled labourers, and might indirectly operate in reducing the number
of unemployed.
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