So far as the second defect, “lack of information,” is concerned, a system of Labour Exchanges promises to be of the highest value.  In proportion as they are used, they will give absolutely contemporary information upon the tendencies of the demand for labour, both in quality and in quantity, as between one trade and another, as between one season and another, as between one cycle and another, and as between one part of the country and another.  They will tell the worker where to go for employment.  They will tell him, what is scarcely less important, where it is useless to go in search of employment.  Properly co-ordinated and connected with the employment bureaux of the various education authorities, which are now coming into existence in Scotland and in England, they will afford an increasing means of guiding the new generation into suitable, promising, and permanent employment, and will divert them from overstocked or declining industries.  They will put an end to that portion of unemployment that is merely local or accidental in character.  They are the only means of grappling with the evils of casual employment, with all its demoralising consequences.  They are capable of aiding the process of dovetailing one seasonal trade into another.  A system of Labour Exchanges, dispensing with the need for wandering in search of work, will make it possible, for the first time, to deal stringently with vagrancy.  And, lastly, Labour Exchanges are indispensable to any system of Unemployment Insurance, as indeed to any other type of honourable assistance to the unemployed, since they alone can provide an adequate test of the desire for work and of the reality of unemployment.  The authority of both Reports of the Poor Law Commission may be cited upon these points; and I shall present this Bill to the House as an important piece of social and industrial machinery, the need for which has long been apparent, and the want of which has been widely and painfully felt.

I said that in the creation of such a system we may profit by the example of Germany; we may do more, we may improve upon the example of Germany.  The German Exchanges, though co-ordinated and encouraged to some extent by State and Imperial Governments, are mainly municipal in their scope.  Starting here with practically a clear field and with the advantage of the experiment and the experience of other lands to guide us, we may begin upon a higher level and upon a larger scale.  There is reason to believe that the utility of a system like Labour Exchanges, like utility of any other market, increases in proportion to its range and scope.  We therefore propose, as a first principle, that our system shall be uniform and national in its character; and here, again, we are supported both by the Minority and by the Majority Reports of the Royal Commission.