all the objects of an unemployment scheme
than would have been possible otherwise.

That system was possible in the cotton trade; in other trades it might
be impossible for technical reasons, or, where possible, it might in
certain circumstances be highly undesirable. The point I wish to stress
is that under an industrial scheme you have an immense flexibility, you
can adapt all the details to the special conditions of the particular
industry, and by that means you can secure results immeasurably superior
to anything that is possible under a universal State system. Moreover,
if certain features of the scheme should prove in practice
unsatisfactory, they can be altered with comparatively little
difficulty. You don't need to be so desperately afraid of the
possibility of making a mistake as you must when it is a case of a great
national scheme, which can only be altered by Act of Parliament.

THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF INDUSTRIES

I do not underrate the difficulty of applying this principle of
industrial relief over the whole field of industry. There is the great
difficulty of defining an industry, or drawing the lines of demarcation
between one trade and another. I have not time to elaborate those
difficulties, but I consider that they constitute an insuperable
obstacle to anything in the nature of an Act of Parliament, which would
impose forcibly upon each industry the obligation to work out an
unemployment scheme. The initiative must come from within the industry;
the organisations of employers and employed must get together and work
out their own scheme, on their own responsibility and with a free hand.
And, if it happens in this way--one industry taking the lead and others
following--these difficulties of demarcation become comparatively
unimportant. You can let an industry define itself more or less as it
likes, and it does not matter much if its distinctions are somewhat
arbitrary. It is not a fatal drawback if some firms and work-people are
left outside who would like to be brought in. And if there are two
industries which overlap one another, each of which is contemplating a
scheme of the kind, it is a comparatively simple matter for the
responsible bodies in the two industries to agree with one another as to
the lines of demarcation between them, as was actually done during the
war by the Cotton Control Board and the Wool Control Board, with
practically no difficulty whatever. But for such agreements to work
s