ive to thrift,
whose whole life and the lives of his wife and children are embarked
in a sort of blind, desperate, fatalistic gamble with circumstances
beyond his comprehension or control, that this poor man, this terrible
and pathetic figure, is not as a class the result of accident or
chance, is not casual because he wishes to be casual, is not casual as
the consequence of some temporary disturbance soon put right. No; the
casual labourer is here because he is wanted here. He is here in
answer to a perfectly well-defined demand. He is here as the result of
economic causes which have been too long unregulated. He is not the
natural product, he is an article manufactured, called into being, to
suit the requirements, in the Prime Minister's telling phrase, of all
industries at particular times and of particular industries at all
times.

I suppose no Department has more means of learning about these things
than the Board of Trade, which is in friendly touch at every stage all
over the country both with capital and labour. I publish that fact
deliberately. I invite you to consider it, I want it to soak in. It
appears to me that measures to check the growth and diminish the
quantity of casual labour must be an essential part of any thorough or
scientific attempt to deal with unemployment, and I would not proclaim
this evil to you without having reason to believe that practicable
means exist by which it can be greatly diminished.

If the first vicious condition which I have mentioned to you is lack
of industrial organisation, if the second is the evil of casual
labour, there is a third not less important. I mean the present
conditions of boy labour. The whole underside of the labour market is
deranged by the competition of boys or young persons who do men's work
for boys' wages, and are turned off so soon as they demand men's wages
for themselves. That is the evil so far as it affects the men; but how
does it affect the boys, the youth of our country, the heirs of all
our exertion, the inheritors of that long treasure of history and
romance, of science and knowledge--aye, of national glory, for which
so many valiant generations have fought and toiled--the youth of
Britain, how are we treating them in the twentieth century of the
Christian era? Are they not being exploited? Are they not being
demoralised? Are they not being thrown away?

Whereas the youth of the wealthier class is all kept under strict
discipline until ei