TRUE  AND  FALSE  IDEAS

159

nicipal  control  over  industry,  the  highly  organised  routine
trades,  already  in  the  hands  of  large  capitalist  companies,
and  often  partaking  of  the  character  of  monopolies,  furnish
the  more  favourable  field  for  such  social  experiments.  To
begin  by  “socialising”  the  irregular  and  backward  industries ­
  simply  means  a  futile  attempt  to  force  progress
by  shoving  in  the  thick  end  of  the  wedge.  Moreover  it
is  a  sound  principle  to  recognise  that  since  industry
exists  ultimately  for  the  benefit  of  the  consumer,  it  is  his
interest  and  not  that  of  the  worker  which  should  be  kept
directly  in  view  when  it  is  proposed  to  assume  an  industry
under  public  management.  This  principle  is  not  antagonistic ­
  to  the  adoption  of  “relief  works”  for  the  unemployed. ­
  But  when  a  municipality  decides  that  it  is  to  the
public  interest  to  meet  some  unforeseen  depression  of
employment  by  offering  public  wage-work  upon  conditions
less  obnoxious  and  degrading  than  Poor  Law  relief,  it
should  do  so  with  a  clear  understanding  that  it  is  departing ­
  from  the  ordinary  rules  of  public  business,  and  should
confine  its  experiments  within  the  narrowest  limits  consistent ­
  with  the  provision  of  effective  relief.  To  concede
any  general  demand  to  the  effect  that  all  unemployed
workers  should  be  provided  with  public  work  at  their
special  trade,  paid  at  standard  wages,  would  mean  an
attempt  to  reverse  the  national  historic  order  of  social
reconstruction,  and  to  move  towards  the  new  industrial
order  along  a  line  of  greatest  possible  resistance.  So  long  as
periods  of  unemployment  recur,  which  cannot  be  foreseen
or  provided  against  by  large  numbers  of  workers,  it  is
desirable  that  the  organised  community  shall  take  measures
by  means  of  public  work  and  wages  to  secure  the  sufferers ­
  against  the  damage  to  life  and  industrial  character