malous, so contrary to our elementary sense of fairness that, as a
permanent proposition it would prove intolerable. We cannot go on for
ever with a system under which in many trades men receive much more when
they are unemployed than when they are at work. On the other hand, the
attempt to avoid such anomalies leads us, so long as we have a uniform
scale of relief, against an alternative which is equally intolerable.
Wages vary greatly from trade to trade; and, if the scale of relief is
not to exceed the wages paid in _any_ occupation it must be very low
indeed. That is the root dilemma of the problem of unemployment
relief--how if your scale of relief is not to be too high for equity and
prudence it is not to be too low for humanity and decency. We have not,
as some people imagine, done anything in recent years to escape from it,
we have merely exchanged one horn of the dilemma for the other.

In any satisfactory system the scale of relief must vary from occupation
to occupation, in accordance with the normal standard of wages ruling in
each case. But it is very difficult, in fact I think it would always be
impracticable to do that under any system of relief, administered by the
State, either the Central Government or the local authorities. It must
be done on an industrial basis; each industry settling its own scale,
finding its own money, and managing its own scheme. That is an idea
which has received much ventilation in the last few years. But the
really telling arguments in favour of it do not seem to me to have
received sufficient stress.

Foremost among them I place the consideration I have just indicated:
that in this way, and in this way alone, it becomes possible for
work-people who receive high wages when they are at work, and where
habits of expenditure and standards of family living are built up on
that basis, to receive when unemployed, adequate relief without that
leading to anomalies which in the long run would prove intolerable. But
there are many other arguments.

A MODEL SCHEME FROM LANCASHIRE

About five years ago I had the opportunity of witnessing at very close
quarters the working of an unemployment scheme on an industrial basis.
The great Lancashire cotton industry was faced during the war with a
very serious unemployment problem, owing to the difficulty of
transporting sufficient cotton from America. It met that situation with
a scheme of unemployment relief, devised and administered by one