A scheme of this character will, however, have to be tried if the manifesto of the Executive Council of the Dockers’ Union, issued in September last, is to be acted upon by Trade-Unionists in general.  According to the doctrine laid down in this manifesto, the idea of a Trade-Union, as a free and open combination, which every workman may enter, provided he pays his subscription and conforms to the rules, is an idea which must for the future be abandoned.  Henceforth, a Trade-Union is to be a close corporation to be worked for the benefit of persons who have succeeded in getting inside it.  The Dockers’ Union, to do them justice, see that this policy is bound to increase the numbers of the destitute, but they propose to remedy this condition of things by establishing “in each municipality factories and workshops where all those who cannot get work under ordinary conditions shall have an opportunity afforded them by the community.”  If these State establishments are to be started for the unemployed, the workers in them must work at something, and it will have to be something which the unskilled labourer will not require a great deal of time to learn.  What would the dockers say if one of these establishments was instituted by the municipality for the loading and unloading of ships?  Hardly a Trade-Union Congress meets in which the complaint is not made that prison labour interferes with free labour; but what sort of outcry would there be if State labour, on an extensive scale, were to enter into serious competition with the individual workman?

These schemes for the establishment of State institutions offering work to the indigent will never solve the problem of want, and all attempts that have hitherto been made in that direction have either ended in failure or met with small success.

The latest of these schemes is a village settlement, which the authorities in New Zealand started some time ago to meet the case of the unemployed.  The Government, in the first place, spent L16,000 in making roads and other conveniences for the settlers, and afterwards advanced L21,000 for building houses, buying implements, and so on.  According to recent advices from New Zealand, only L2000 of this advance has been paid back, and it is the general feeling of the colony that the project has proved a failure.  These, and other experiments of a similar character, compel us to recognise the disagreeable fact that a certain proportion of people who are in the habit of falling out of work are, as a class, extremely difficult to put properly on their legs.  Failure, for some reason or another, always dogs their steps, and the more Society does for them, the less they will be disposed to do anything for themselves.