of articles which are not for the most part produced in this country, but which are largely imported from abroad.  It is urged that although shoes and furniture and matches ought not to be produced by assisted labour for the outside market, it is permissible for an agricultural colony to replace by home products the large imports in the shape of cheese, fruit, bacon, poultry, etc., which we now receive from abroad.  Those who maintain this position commonly fail to take into consideration the exports which go out from this country to pay for these imports.  If this export trade is diminished the trades engaged in manufacturing the exported goods will suffer, and labour employed in these trades may be thrown out of employment.  This objection may be met by showing that the goods formerly exported, or an equivalent quantity of other goods, will be demanded for the increased consumption of the labourers in the agricultural colony.  This is a valid answer if the home consumption rises sufficiently to absorb the goods formerly exported to pay for agricultural imports.  But even where this just balance is maintained, allowance must be made for some disturbance of established trades owing to the fact that the new demand created at home will probably be for different classes of articles from those which formed the exports now displaced.  The safest use of assisted labour, where the products are designed for the open market, is in the production of articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this country.  Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to injure the wages of outside labour engaged in similar productions.

Since the existence of an unemployed class who are unemployed because they are unable, not because they are unwilling, to get work, is proof of an insufficiency of employment, it is apparent that nothing is of real assistance which does not increase the net amount of employment.  Since the amount of employment is determined by, and varies with, the consumption of the community, the only sure method of increasing the amount of employment is by raising the standard of consumption for the community.  Where, as is common in times of trade depression, unemployment of labour is attended by unemployment of capital, this joint excess of the two requisites of production is only to be explained by the low standard of consumption of the community.  Since the working-classes form a vast majority of the community, and their standard of consumption is low compared with that of the upper classes, it is to a progressive standard of comfort among the workers that we must look for a guarantee of increasing employment.  It may be urged that the luxurious expenditure of the rich provides as much employment as the more necessary expenditure of the poor.  But, setting aside all considerations of the inutility or noxious character of luxury, there is one vital difference between the employment afforded