The safest use of assisted labour, where the
products are designed for the open market, is in the production of
articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this
country. Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to
prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to
injure the wages of outside labour engaged in similar productions.
Since the existence of an unemployed class who are unemployed because
they are unable, not because they are unwilling, to get work, is proof
of an insufficiency of employment, it is apparent that nothing is of
real assistance which does not increase the net amount of employment.
Since the amount of employment is determined by, and varies with, the
consumption of the community, the only sure method of increasing the
amount of employment is by raising the standard of consumption for the
community. Where, as is common in times of trade depression,
unemployment of labour is attended by unemployment of capital, this
joint excess of the two requisites of production is only to be explained
by the low standard of consumption of the community. Since the working-
classes form a vast majority of the community, and their standard of
consumption is low compared with that of the upper classes, it is to a
progressive standard of comfort among the workers that we must look for
a guarantee of increasing employment. It may be urged that the luxurious
expenditure of the rich provides as much employment as the more
necessary expenditure of the poor.
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