Regularisation.
Towards the end of the Report we find an elaborate scheme for the "regularisation" of labour. Under this the Government is to "ear-mark" at least four millions a year of expenditure upon the public service, for work which is to be undertaken out of loan on a ten years' programme at unequal annual rates to the extent of ten or even fifteen millions in a single year whenever the "Index Number" of unemployment has reached "Warning Point" (p. 1196). The money is then to be spent in guns, battleships, barracks, post offices, schools, printing historical manuscripts, and renewing worn-out furniture. Simultaneously public bodies are to be urged to undertake their ordinary municipal work. It may be feared that the "Index Number," which will be determined by the number of applications for work to the labour exchange of the future, will tend under these conditions to remain permanently at "Warning Point," and there is after all some limit to the number of guns, battleships, etc., which are required, and some limit to the ordinary municipal undertakings of Borough Councils. Many will be of opinion that already there has been far too much pressure put upon them to manufacture work. There are those who will enter a protest against these further proposals for the manipulation of the labour market. Sir George Nicholls said many years ago, "No one now doubts the pernicious effect of artificial employment, or is blind to the consequences of tampering with the labour market, whether by the parish or in any other way," and that until lately has been the view of most responsible statesmen. We first turned our back upon that policy in 1886 when Mr Chamberlain issued his "momentous" Circular, and we have since embodied the principle of that
