on exist, is not discharged, ought to be
discharged, and will have to be discharged.

The social machinery at the basis of our industrial life is deficient,
ill-organised, and incomplete. While large numbers of persons enjoy
great wealth, while the mass of the artisan classes are abreast of and
in advance of their fellows in other lands, there is a minority,
considerable in numbers, whose condition is a disgrace to a scientific
and professedly Christian civilisation, and constitutes a grave and
increasing peril to the State. Yes, in this famous land of ours, so
often envied by foreigners, where the grace and ease of life have been
carried to such perfection, where there is so little class hatred and
jealousy, where there is such a wide store of political experience and
knowledge, where there are such enormous moral forces available, so
much wisdom, so much virtue, so much power, we have not yet succeeded
in providing that necessary apparatus of insurance and security,
without which our industrial system is not merely incomplete, but
actually inhumane.

I said that disturbances of our industrial system are often started
from outside this country by causes utterly beyond our control. When
there is an epidemic of cholera, or typhoid, or diphtheria, a healthy
person runs less risk than one whose constitution is prepared to
receive the microbes of disease, and even if himself struck down, he
stands a far greater chance of making a speedy recovery. The social
and industrial conditions in Great Britain at this present time cannot
be described as healthy. I discern in the present industrial system of
our country three vicious conditions which make us peculiarly
susceptible to any outside disturbance of international trade. First,
the lack of any central organisation of industry, or any general and
concerted control either of ordinary Government work, or of any
extraordinary relief works. It would be possible for the Board of
Trade to foretell with a certain amount of accuracy the degree of
unemployment likely to be reached in any winter. It ought to be
possible for some authority in some Government office--which I do not
care--to view the whole situation in advance, and within certain
limits to exert a powerful influence over the general distribution of
Government contracts.

There is nothing economically unsound in increasing temporarily and
artificially the demand for labour during a period of temporary and
artificial con