ourselves to effect transfers. We were appointed in order
to advise how best to accelerate and intensify the process of
transfer of labour already going on through individual initiative,
through the machinery of the employment exchanges, the Govern-
ment training centres for unemployed adults (both for home and
overseas), the juvenile unemployment centres and the facilities
provided for transfer overseas both under the Empire Settlement
Act, 1922, and by ordinary migration. We have therefore studied
closely the working of these various agencies and have: already
made a number of suggestions which have been adopted. Instances
of these are the opening of new training centres for young men
in this country at Bristol and Dudley, extensions at similar
training centres already established, an extension of the scheme
of juvenile unemployment centres in the mining areas, extensions
in the training centres for migration overseas at Brandon and
Claydon, in Kast Anglia, and the provision of additional facilities
bo assist the movement of unemployed persons, particularly of
married men, to areas of new employment in this country.
8. We have accepted as a fact the existence of a problem of surplus
labour in certain industries, requiring to be dealt with by transfer.
We have therefore regarded as our immediate business all measures
which would in any way assist the transfer of workers either in
this country or overseas, concerning ourselves largely with the
agencies and the machinery through which such transfers can be
carried out and the removal of hindrances to transfer. We have
not excluded from our survey the possible creation, by direct
intervention in the employment market, of opportunities
for employment through transfer. At the same time we have felt
bound to have regard to the settled financial policy of the country
and to follow the general lines of this policy in reviewing any of
the more ambitious schemes, involving heavy outlay of money,
which have been brought to our notice. ’
9. Acting upon this view, we have not felt it within our province
to examine, for example, such matters as the reorganisation of the
coal and iron and steel trades by amalgamation and grouping, or
the possibilities of immediately increasing the employing capacity
of the iron and steel and coal trades (and so reducing the size
of the ** surplus’) through such aids as a general subsidy to
those trades or a tariff on imported steel or a bounty on export
coal. Similarly we have not examined the question of the reversal
of the present legislation on the permissible hours of employment
in - the coal industry. We are under no illusions about the
necessity for a reorganisation from within of the heavy industries;
it is beginning already and will continue. But it seems
clear that in its first phases at any rate teorganisation
means concentration of production in the most economic units,
IDD4
Q