operate and the time has come when a real effort should be made 
fo bring home the need for a movement of population away from 
she depressed areas. 
42. As an essential condition for the growth of the will to move, 
nothing should be done which might tend to anchor men to their 
home district by holding out an illusory prospect of employment. 
We therefore reject as unsound policy relief works in the 
depressed areas. Such schemes are temporary; at the end the 
situation is much as before, and the financial resources either of 
the Exchequer or of the Local Authorities have been drained to 
no permanent purpose. Grants of assistance such as those made 
by the Unemployment Grants Committee, which help to finance 
works carried out by the Local Authority in depressed areas, for 
the temporary employment of men in those areas, are a negation 
of the policy which ought in our opinion to be pursued; and, while 
we recognise the ability with which that Committee have per- 
formed their functions, we are clear that the continuance or 
stimulation of their activities would merely retain the unemployed 
in the depressed areas and put further financial burdens on Local 
Authorities already very hard hit. If works of this kind are to 
be undertaken at all, they should be undertaken in areas where 
smployment generally is good, so that they might provide work for 
unemployed from the depressed areas, with ultimate chances of 
permanent absorption into industry. 
43. Similarly, the interests of the unemployed surplus in these 
areas require that the administration of poor relief and of unem- 
ployment benefit should not become an artificial barrier to the 
movement of labour. In areas where regular work in the future 
for a large proportion of the unemployed is an impossibility, it is 
essential that the economic stimulus towards transfer to another 
area to earn a livelihood should not be artificially weakened. 
14. The personal will to move is the foundation of a transfer 
ance policy. It is on the other factors, however—the co-operation of 
all members of the community who are in a position to assist, and 
ihe help by training or otherwise—that the practical realisation of 
such a policy depends. It is upon these factors, and in particular 
upon the first—for in our view Government action can be of little 
avail in any attack on this problem without the active help of 
the whole community—that reliance must in the main be placed 
to overcome the difficulties in the way of absorption (para. 37). 
With direct help toward transfer we deal subsequently. 1t may 
be convenient, however, to examine some of the possibilities of 
20-operation, 
45. Effective transfer on any scale proportionate to he problem 
must depend upon absorption within ordinary industry. But it 
will be urged that, so far as transfers from the depressed areas 
to other employment in this country are concerned, vacancies éan