The British authorities which I have mentioned are reinforced by the example of many foreign countries; and as early as 1904 the Board of Trade, in its reports on agencies and methods of dealing with unemployed in foreign countries, drew attention to the very considerable extension of Labour Exchanges in the last three years in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Belgium.  Since then Norway has been added to the list.  Mr. W. Bliss, in the Bulletin of the Washington Bureau of Labour for May, 1908, in the course of a survey of the whole field of unemployment and of possible remedies, says, “The most important agencies for providing work for the unemployed who are employable, but have no prospect of returning to their former positions, are the public employment bureaux.  These are largely developed in a number of European countries, and especially in Germany, where they have grown rapidly in the last twenty years, both in numbers and in efficiency.”  So that the House will see that we have behind us this afternoon not only a practical consensus of opinion among authorities at home in favour of the policy, but the spectacle of its successful practice on an extensive scale, and over a period of years, in the greatest industrial community of the Continent, and its extension in various degrees to many other countries.

I do not, therefore, propose to occupy the time of the House with any elaborate justification of the merits of the Bill.  Those we may discuss at our leisure later.  I confine myself only to a few general observations.  Two main defects in modern industrial conditions which were emphasised by the Royal Commission were the lack of mobility of labour and lack of information.  With both of these defects the National System of Labour Exchanges is calculated to deal.  Modern industry has become national.  Fresh means of transport knit the country into one, as it was never knit before.  Labour alone in its search for markets has not profited; the antiquated, wasteful, and demoralising method of personal application—­that is to say, the hawking of labour—­persists.  Labour Exchanges will give labour for the first time a modernised market.  Labour Exchanges, in the second place, will increase and will organise the mobility of labour.  But let me point out that to increase the mobility of labour is not necessarily to increase the movement of labour.  Labour Exchanges will not increase the movement of labour; they will only render that movement, when it has become necessary, more easy, more smooth, more painless, and less wasteful.

Labour Exchanges do not pretend to any large extent to create new employment.  Their main function will be to organise the existing employment, and by organising the existing employment to reduce the friction and wastage, resulting from changes in employment and the movement of workers, to a minimum.  By so doing they will necessarily raise the general economic standard of our industrial life.