“That this Conference, realizing that the growing volume of unemployment and under-employment is due in a large measure to the interruption in world trading following on the war and the defective peace treaties, in addition to the folly of British and allied policy in relation to the Soviet Government of Russia, condemns the British Government for the unwarrantable delay in securing peace and opening trade relationships with the Russian Government. “The Conference further condemns the Coalition Government for failing to make provision for the prevention of unemployment and for the proper treatment of unemployed persons; it calls attention to the fact that in February 1920, the Labour Party in Parliament introduced its Bill for the prevention of unemployment, containing provisions for the maintenance and training of unemployed persons, which the Government refused to accept.” The last paragraph of this resolution is important. It has been customary in recent years for Socialist advocates to assure the workmen that unemployment can never exist under any of the types of socialistic organization of industry, but that it is an evil peculiar to what they call the “capitalistic regime,” and that unemployment is merely one of the devices of the employer to break down Trade Union conditions and so lower wages. How exactly the consumer, who, after all, is the person who really controls the production of commodities, is to be persuaded to consume and pay for more commodities under a socialistic organization of industry than under a capitalistic system is not-perhaps wisely so-explained, but the suggestion of the final paragraph is that were the present “pernicious economic system” abolished and the Labour Party in power, then if its Government were unable to provide work it could and would provide maintenance and, the ordinary worker is told, at full Trade Union rates of wages. As to how such scheme is to be financed the resolution is sagaciously silent. Labour’s Refusal to Co-operate with the Government, 1921