A Departmental Committee at the Board of Trade has, during the last six months, been working out the scheme in close detail.  The whole country will be divided into ten or twelve principal divisions, each with a Divisional Clearing House, and each under a Divisional Chief, all co-ordinated with the National Clearing House in London.  Distributed among these 10 Divisions in towns of, let us say, 100,000 or upwards will be between 30 and 40 First-class Labour Exchanges; in towns of 50,000 to 100,000 between 40 and 50 Second-class Exchanges; and about 150 minor offices, consisting of Third-class Exchanges, Sub-Offices, and Waiting-rooms, which last will be specially used in connection with Dock decasualisation.

The control and direction of the whole system will be under the Board of Trade.  But in order to secure absolute impartiality as between the interests of capital and labour, Joint Advisory Committees, to contain in equal numbers representatives of employers and work-people, will be established in the principal centres.  Thus we shall apply to the local management of Labour Exchanges the same principle of parity of representation between workmen and employers under impartial guidance and chairmanship, that we have adopted in the administration of the Trade Boards Bill, and that, mutatis mutandis, is the governing feature of the Courts of Arbitration which have recently been set up.  If this Bill should obtain the assent of Parliament without undue delay, I should hope to bring the system into simultaneous operation over the whole country, so far as practicable, in the early months of next year.  Temporary premises will be procured in all cases in the first instance; but a programme of building has been prepared, which in ten years will by a gradual process enable in all the principal centres these temporary premises to be replaced by permanent buildings.

The expense of this system will no doubt be considerable.  Its ordinary working will not need a sum less than about L170,000 per year, and during the period when the building is going on the expenditure will rise to about L200,000 per year.

We hope that the Labour Exchanges will become industrial centres in each town.  We hope they will become the labour market.  They may, where necessary, provide an office where the Trade Board, if there is one, will hold its meetings.  We desire to co-operate with trade unions on cordial terms, while preserving strict impartiality between capital and labour in disputed matters.  It may, for instance, be possible for trade unions to keep their vacant-book in some cases at the exchanges.  The structure of those Exchanges may in some cases be such as to enable us to have rooms which can be let to trade unions at a rent, for benefit and other meetings, so as to avoid the necessity under which all but the strongest unions lie at the present time of conducting their meetings in licensed premises.  The Exchanges may, as they