Full text: The abolition of destitution and unemployment

maintain them until such time as work was found for them to 
do. 
H. H. Schloesser (Fabian Society Local Government 
Group), seconding the resolution, said that the proposals of 
the Minority Report in regard to Unemployment had been 
embodied in the redraft of the Right to Work Bill of the 
Labour Party, and there was no fear of any conflict between 
the two sets of proposals. 
H. Quelch moved and A. A. Purcell (Amalgamated 
Society of French Polishers) seconded an amendment, the 
object of which was stated to be “To take the Unemployed 
out of the Capitalist Labour Market altogether,” and this 
amendment was defeated and further amendments moved by 
Frank Smith, L.C.C., and Louis A. Hill (Amalgamated Union 
of Bakers), the purport of which was to advocate the legisla 
tive restriction of the hours of labour, demanding the creation 
of a Ministry of Labour, and the granting of facilities for the 
immediate passing of a Right to Work Bill, were accepted by 
the mover of the resolution. 
On a further amendment being moved by Alex. Gossip 
and seconded by F. Bramley (Furnishing Trades Association), 
George Bernard Shaw said he thought they had better 
stick to the carefully worded resolution before them. Unem 
ployment was a necessary condition of industry, but suppose 
they brought about the measure which they were advocating 
in the resolution, and all men waiting for work would be 
maintained honourably at the public expense, it would go 
further than some of them yet appeared to see, because there 
were a great many private employers who only kept people 
permanently employed because they did not like to face the 
inhumanity of throwing people out between one job and 
another. 
If they relieved that difficulty and made it no longer 
an inhumane thing to take a man on casually, there were a 
great many employers who now kept men on permanently who 
would begin to employ labour intermittently. Did they 
realise that the great thing the Unions were doing to-day was 
insuring the employer against unemployment? Did they not 
see that one of the first results of the putting into operation 
of the proposals made in the resolution would be that the 
great Trade Unions would give up that department of activity 
and would throw the unemployed on the public resources ? In 
this sense their measures would create a good deal of unem 
ployment. They wanted to get continuous production and 
continuous purchasing power face to face. It was said, “Why 
not organise men outside the Capitalist System?” That was 
not possible. They would not be able to work out the system 
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