The social machinery at the basis of our industrial life is deficient, ill-organised, and incomplete.  While large numbers of persons enjoy great wealth, while the mass of the artisan classes are abreast of and in advance of their fellows in other lands, there is a minority, considerable in numbers, whose condition is a disgrace to a scientific and professedly Christian civilisation, and constitutes a grave and increasing peril to the State.  Yes, in this famous land of ours, so often envied by foreigners, where the grace and ease of life have been carried to such perfection, where there is so little class hatred and jealousy, where there is such a wide store of political experience and knowledge, where there are such enormous moral forces available, so much wisdom, so much virtue, so much power, we have not yet succeeded in providing that necessary apparatus of insurance and security, without which our industrial system is not merely incomplete, but actually inhumane.

I said that disturbances of our industrial system are often started from outside this country by causes utterly beyond our control.  When there is an epidemic of cholera, or typhoid, or diphtheria, a healthy person runs less risk than one whose constitution is prepared to receive the microbes of disease, and even if himself struck down, he stands a far greater chance of making a speedy recovery.  The social and industrial conditions in Great Britain at this present time cannot be described as healthy.  I discern in the present industrial system of our country three vicious conditions which make us peculiarly susceptible to any outside disturbance of international trade.  First, the lack of any central organisation of industry, or any general and concerted control either of ordinary Government work, or of any extraordinary relief works.  It would be possible for the Board of Trade to foretell with a certain amount of accuracy the degree of unemployment likely to be reached in any winter.  It ought to be possible for some authority in some Government office—­which I do not care—­to view the whole situation in advance, and within certain limits to exert a powerful influence over the general distribution of Government contracts.

There is nothing economically unsound in increasing temporarily and artificially the demand for labour during a period of temporary and artificial contraction.  There is a plain need of some averaging machinery to regulate and even-up the general course of the labour market, in the same way as the Bank of England, by its bank rate, regulates and corrects the flow of business enterprise.  When the extent of the depression is foreseen, the extent of the relief should also be determined.  There ought to be in permanent existence certain recognised industries of a useful, but uncompetitive character, like, we will say, afforestation, managed by public departments, and capable of being expanded or contracted according to the needs of the labour market, just as easily as you can pull out