When one passes to the year 1918, we find no indication whatever that the Labour Party had any premonition of the decline in trade which commenced in the spring of 1920, or were gifted with any widening vision as to the remedies required to meet it. This appears from the proceedings of the Labour Party’s Annual Conference in that year, and from the resolution which was passed on the prevention of unemployment. This resolution, after declaring that the years immediately following the war would probably include periods of grave dislocation of profit-making industry, called upon the Government to arrange the carrying out of the next succeeding ten years’ programme of national and local government works, including housing, schools, roads, railways, canals, harbours, afforestation, reclamations, etc., in such a way as “any temporary congestion of the labour market may require.” This resolution solemnly and without reservation committed the Labour Party to this sweeping generalization:—“Now that it is known that all that is required to prevent the occurrence of any widespread or lasting unemployment is that the aggregate total demand for labour should be maintained year in and year out at an approximately even level, and that this can be secured by nothing more difficult or revolutionary than a sensible distribution of the public orders for works and services so as to keep always up to the prescribed total the aggregate public and capitalist demand for labour, together with the prohibition of overtime in excess of the prescribed normal working day, there is now no excuse for any Government which allows such a calamity as widespread or lasting unemployment ever to occur.” One can thus realize what, up to the end of 1918, were the sovereign panaceas of the Labour Party for the prevention of unemployment after the war. Let us proceed to trace from and after 1919 the recommendations of Labour, which it is now said, had they been adopted by the Government, would have averted the present conditions of unemployment. The Prevention of Unemployment Bill, 1919