23 
should tend to prevent the congestion of markets, and the 
reason he supported the recommendations of the Minority 
Report in regard to Unemployment was that he believed that 
these proposals were not merely in the right direction, but 
that they form a unified scheme of proposals which would do 
more than any other practical proposals which he had seen 
to put an end to the congestion of trade and the depression 
and unemployment which ensued. If they were to work in 
this direction, to achieve this desirable end, they could only 
do it in one or other of three ways. 
Either they must reduce the effective supply of labour or 
they must increase the demand for labour, or they must 
regularise that demand for labour. 
The proposals of the Minority Report seemed to him to 
reduce the over supply of labour in that they proposed to 
remove large numbers of children and young persons from 
competing "in the labour market, to reduce the competition 
of married women, to remove certain elements of incompetence 
at the bottom of all the trades, and otherwise, by taking out 
of our industrial system large numbers of invalids and aged 
people to reduce the chronic over-supply of labour 
in the labour market. They would stimulate the demand for 
commodities through taxing the superfluous wealth of 
the rich and spending it in the name of the State in supply 
ing work and wages. More important still would be the in 
direct action of the scheme in improving the organisation of 
the labour market. If they could remove those waste elements 
from the competition of the labour market they would enable 
every Trade Union to organise more effectively, and so raise 
the general standard of wages. 
Lastly, it would help to regularise the demand for labour, 
partly because working-class expenditure would itself be more 
regular than expenditure on luxuries, and partly because it 
proposed to utilise the machine of State action in setting going 
a current of public industry to counter-balance the irregular 
action of private enterprise. 
The chairman then called upon Sidney Webb, LL.B., to 
read a paper on “The Organisation of the Labour Market.” 
The paper submitted by Mr. Webb was as follows:— 
The Minority Report makes a new departure in the Unem 
ployed question. All previous proposals, whether by Munici 
pal Authorities or philanthropists, have taken for granted the 
continual existence of periodical Unemployment in mass; and 
have dealt only with the relief of the workman when he had 
become unemployed. This is even the common interpreta 
tion of the Right to Work Bill, though I think that measure 
capable of a wider scope. But the Minority Report goes a 
step further. It declares this chronic Unemployment to be 
a disease of society, demanding not merely tlie relief of the