act as a premium
upon industrial failure, checking the output of energy and the growth of
self-reliance in the lower ranks of the working classes. No scheme for
the relief of poverty is wholly free from this difficulty; but there is
danger that the State colony of Mr. Booth would, if it were successful
as a mode of "drainage," be open to it in no ordinary degree.

2. Closely related to this first difficulty is the fact that Mr. Booth
provides no real suggestion for a process of discrimination in the
treatment of our social failures, which shall distinguish the failure
due directly to deep-seated vice of character and habit, from the
failure due to unhappy chance or the fault of others. Difficult, almost
impossible, as such discrimination between deserving and undeserving is,
it is felt that any genuine reform of our present poor law system
demands that some attempt in this direction should be made. We must try
to distinguish curable from incurable cases, and we must try to cure the
former while we preserve society from the contamination of the latter.
The mere removal of a class of "very poor" will not suffice.

Since however the scheme of Mr. C. Booth does not proceed beyond the
stage of a suggested outline of treatment, it is not fair or profitable
to press close criticism. It is, however, a fact of some significance
that one who has brought such close study to bear upon the problem of
poverty should arrive at the conclusion that "Thorough interference on
the part of the State with the lives of a small fraction of the
population, would tend to make it possible, ultimately, to dispense with
any Socialistic interference in the lives of all the rest."[33]

Sec. 5. Proposed remedies for "Unemployment."--In discussing methods of
dealing with "the unemployed," who represent an "over-supply" of labour
at a given time, it is often found convenient to distinguish the
temporary "unemployment" due to fluctuations rising from the nature of
certain trades, and the permanent unemployment or half employment of
large numbers of the least efficient town workers. The fluctuations in
employment due to changes of season, as in the building trades, and many
branches of dock labour, or to changes of fashion, as in the silk and
"fancy" woollen trade, or to temporary changes in the field of
employment caused by a transformation of industrial processes, are
direct causes of a considerable quantity of temporary unemployment. To
these must b