preference to those most calculated to foster the revival of industry, comprehensive housing schemes to be included prominently amongst them. The Government’s distinction between schemes of public works as revenue producing and non-revenue producing, it was admitted, was sound, and should be maintained, but in the case of the former, the Government should make a grant of 75 per cent. of the necessary expenditure and lend the remaining 25 per cent. to local authorities free of interest for three years, the rate of interest thereafter being 3 per cent., with arrangements for repayment at stated intervals. In the case of non-productive schemes, the Government to make a grant of 90 per cent. of the necessary expenditure and lend the remaining 10 per cent. to local authorities free of interest for five years, at the end of which time interest and repayment should be the same as in the case of the productive schemes. “If, however, employment is still not forthcoming for all workers, provision for maintenance must be made by means of unemployment insurance benefits on an adequate scale.” In Part II of this book it will be seen how far the Government has gone for the purpose of alleviating unemployment in the directions desired by Labour. CHAPTER XI THE LABOUR PARTY’S POLICY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT 2. ITS IMPRACTICABILITY The Unsoundness of the Right to Work—The Failure of Work or Maintenance in France—Impossibility of Providing Suitable Work—Employment Depends Primarily on Demand—The Farm Colony Fiascos. The utter impracticability of Labour’s principle of “work or maintenance” is almost self-apparent. The primary cause of unemployment is want of work, the result of economic forces, but the cure of unemployment, according to Labour, is to be the provision of work by the Government in the teeth of adverse economic conditions. The work is to be “suitable work,” and obviously must be either (1) the production of commodities and services which the consuming public will buy, that is to say, remunerative work, or (2) the execution of public works which, up to that time, have not been constructed, but which, although economic circumstances have not justified their construction before, are deemed proper to be carried out if work has to be found for unemployed persons. Their appropriate name is “relief works.” The maintenance is to be such weekly sum as the local medical officer of health deems necessary to maintain each unemployed person and his dependants in a state of physical efficiency. The Unemployed Workmen’s Bill, introduced by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in 1907, was the first Bill enunciating the right to work. In 1908-9 similar Bills were introduced by the Labour Party under the same title. In 1910-11-12, Bills for the same object, called The Right to Work Bill, were introduced by members of the Party. The Unsoundness of the Right to Work