I have hitherto been speaking of the industrial organisation of insurance schemes, labour exchanges, and economic development.  Now I come to that great group of questions which are concerned with the prevention and relief of distress.  We have before us the reports of the majority and minority of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and we see there a great and urgent body of reforms which require the attention of Parliament.  The first and most costly step in the relief of distress has already been taken by the Old-Age Pensions Act, supplemented, as it will be if the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification.  By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law.  We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bona fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their management and care.

But what I want to show you, if I have made my argument clear, is that all these schemes—­which I can do little more than mention this afternoon, each one of which is important—­are connected one with the other, fit into one another at many points, that they are part of a concerted and interdependent system for giving a better, fairer social organisation to the masses of our fellow-countrymen.  Unemployment insurance, which will help to tide a workman over a bad period, is intimately and necessarily associated with the labour exchanges which will help to find him work and which will test his willingness to work.  This, again, will be affected by the workings of the Development Bill, which, as I told you, we trust may act as a counterpoise to the rocking of the industrial boat and give a greater measure of stability to the labour market.

The fact that everybody in the country, man and woman alike, will be entitled, with scarcely any exception, to an old-age pension from the State at the age of seventy—­that fact makes it ever so much cheaper to insure against invalidity or infirmity up to the age of seventy.  And, with the various insurance schemes which are in preparation, we ought to be able to set up a complete ladder, an unbroken bridge or causeway, as it were, along which the whole body of the people may move with a certain assured measure of security and safety against hazards and misfortunes.  Then, if provision can be arranged for widows and orphans who are left behind, that will be a powerful remedy against the sweating evil; for, as you know, these helpless people, who in every country find employment in particular trades, are unable to make any fair bargain for themselves, and their labour, and this consequently leads to the great evils which have very often been brought to the notice of Parliament.  That, again, will fit in with the Anti-Sweating Bill we are passing through Parliament this year.