The Poplar experiment certainly satisfied Mr. Long when he was at the Local Government Board. He expressly stated, when suggesting the formation of his Central Unemployed Committee, that farm colonies represented one means by which the Committee could assist men out of work. One of the first things the Committee did was to take the Hollesley Bay Farm, where both Crooks and Lansbury as active members of the Committee helped to develop the work. Mr. Fels again assisted, this time building a number of cottages with a view to drafting off some of the colonists into a position of independence, joined by their wives and families from London. The hope is entertained that some proportion of them may become small holders. Hollesley Bay Farm, which had been an agricultural training college for the sons of rich men going to the colonies, thus became a centre for training poor men to colonise their own country. All these practical schemes for helping the unemployed and saving the cities from recurring periods of distress, which Crooks had done so much to set going, lend colour to his claim that the time has come for the addition to all future Cabinets of a new member to be styled the Minister for Labour. For nearly twenty years we have seen this labouring man, content with his three or four pounds a week, in a working-man's house in a working-man's neighbourhood, devising and carrying out social measures for the well-being of the nation that ought rightly to have come from the Government. "The first thing a Labour Minister would do," he says, "would be to take over the Labour Department and other more or less allied departments of the Board of Trade. The present Labour returns of the Board of Trade are no good to anybody. I would have the Labour Minister obtain from all the local authorities a statement of what they regard as useful public works for their own districts. As soon as a spell of bad trade set in in any particular district our Minister of Industry would turn up the suggestions that had reached him from the affected quarter and make a national grant towards starting the local works. "Then again I should leave to his Department rather than to the Local Government Board the duty of controlling farm colonies. I want to see the Government responsible for three separate kinds of labour colonies. First I want a farm colony for the habitual able-bodied pauper. He needs to have his muscles hardened and to be trained to work. The tasks set such a man in the workhouse are wasteful, and do him no good. You might have a combination of Poor Law Unions interested in such a colony. The second class of farm colony would be for habitual tramps. These men need to be kept entirely separate from able-bodied paupers. The third class would be voluntary colonies, to which unemployed men could be sent and trained in market gardening and farming.