ECONOMIC  PRECAUTIONS

M3

poses  that  the  money  advanced  by  the  State  should  be
an  investment  upon  which  ordinary  interest  could  be  paid,
and  he  thinks  that  good  management  would  enable  the
County  Council  to  dispense  with  aid  from  the  Poor  Law
Authorities  in  payment  of  deficits.  Neither  of  these  expectations ­
  could  be  fulfilled.  The  very  name  Training
Colony  is  sufficient  to  indicate  that  it  cannot  be  selfsupporting.
  No  educational  work  can  be  self-supporting.
The  State  would  have  to  provide  money  for  which  it
would  receive  no  direct  financial  return,  each  year  the
Poor  Law  Authorities  would  have  to  pay  a  certain  sum
for  each  man  sent  to  the  colony.  Once  recognise  that
this  investment  of  public  money  must  look  for  its  return
not  in  pecuniary  interest  but  in  certain  unmeasurable
forms  of  public  good,  the  improvement  of  the  industrial
character  of  certain  workers,  the  public  guarantee  of  a
decent  livelihood  without  degradation,  a  certain  direct
relief  of  the  low-skilled  labour-market,  and  the  proposal
takes  a  reasonable  shape.
Some  such  scheme  of  Training  Colonies  (divorced,  if
possible,  from  direct  association  with  our  Poor  Law  system)
involving  a  recognition  of  the  public  utility  of  guaranteeing ­
  work  to  all  willing  workers,  and  practical  training
for  work  to  all  willing  to  be  trained,  is  perhaps  the
largest  and  the  most  serviceable  of  the  palliatives  for  “  the
unemployed.”
ij.  Economic  Precautions  required  in
Labour  Colonics.
If  such  a  scheme  could  in  fact  be  worked  on  a  selfsupporting
  basis  no  distinctively  economic  difficulty  would
arise.  But  when  it  is  recognised  that  these  and  all  other