“I believe that relief works ought to be the last resort of any community. They sterilize volition, sap self-reliance, and introduce into industry those very conditions of irregularity and low pay which we are seeking to remove.... If the works are State-aided, charity-fed, tax-founded, or rate-subsidized, they will only be a form of public benevolence that will divert the right money in the wrong way to wasteful ends with demoralizing results. New works unproductive and unremunerative, fed by rates and taxes, are about the worst form of relief that can be imagined.” Mr. Burns’s conclusion will be confirmed by every person who has any experience of relief works. The work done is per unit immensely more costly than if it were done under normal industrial conditions; the men know it is not serious work, and therefore do not work. If relief works have to be provided—and the unemployed cannot be left to starve—what the works shall be, the conditions under which they shall be executed, the extent to which the State ought to go, raise extraordinarily difficult questions calling for the nicest judgment. It is wholly unnecessary to emphasize the evil of doles, whatever form they take, whether Poor Law outdoor relief or anything else. I have had many cases under my personal notice of men who, being offered work at reasonable rates of pay, refused to take it, stating that they were doing better out of their various payments for unemployment—and they were. Part II GOVERNMENT LABOUR POLICY CHAPTER XII WAR-TIME LABOUR REGULATION AND ITS EFFECTS Co-operation between Employers and Unions at Beginning of War—The Unsettling Effect of Shortage of Labour—The “Treasury” Agreements of March 1915—The Limitation of Employers’ Profits—Failure of Compulsory Arbitration—Effect of Relieving Employers of Responsibility for Labour Management—Increases of Wages and Prices—Relation of Wages to Cost of Living. Many of our industrial difficulties to-day are due to the effect that the war, and especially the measures which it was necessary for Government to take during the war, have had upon the psychology of the workers. To attempt a description of those measures in their entirety would be wholly outside the scope of this book; those who wish to study them will find a full and lucid description in _Labour Supply and Regulation_, by Mr. Humbert Wolfe, C.B.E., shortly to be published by the Oxford University Press. I am only concerned to deal with them so far as they provide guidance for future policy. Co-operation between Employers and Unions at Beginning of War