and a large majority of employers would welcome a serious effort to popularise and assist the adoption of the system. In such a state of opinion wise political action may be of the greatest service. I do not advocate compulsory legislation or anything of that kind. The very essence of copartnership is goodwill on both sides, and that is difficult if not impossible to secure by compulsion. But short of that, much might be done. There are certain difficulties caused by the Companies and Companies Clauses Acts which might be removed. Advantages might be offered to copartnership undertakings when opportunity served. For instance, if wages boards were to be established it might be provided that if the employers and employed preferred to adopt an approved system of copartnership they might do so. Above all, the Government Departments concerned might be instructed to promote copartnership whenever possible. They might prepare model schemes for different industries for there is no sealed pattern applicable to every industry alike. They might collect information as to experiments not only here but in other countries -not mere lists of cases where something like copartnership or profit-sharing has been tried-but helpful facts showing what difficulties have been met with and how they have been overcome. Lastly, when serious disputes occurred and the mediation or advice of the Government was sought, the Department might suggest to the parties the establishment of copartnership as the best way of avoiding future disputes. I venture to claim that such a policy would be an instance of genuine Conservative reform. It is based on the principle of National Unity. It is not reactionary-for it follows the same direction as our political development. From one point of view, indeed, it may be described as a step towards the democratisation of industry. Still less is it revolutionary, for it aims at stability and domestic peace. Like peasant proprietorship of the land, it is designed to broaden the economic basis of society. Nor is it the least of its merits that though the extremists of Labour and Capital alike reject it, it commands the sympathy and support of moderate men of all parties. Doubtless many difficulties would remain, even if industrial suspicion were abolished. It is not pretended that any reform of the relations between employers and employed is a cure-all. There is housing, for instancethe apparently insurmountable difficulty of building sufficient houses for the working class at prices which will enable the tenants to pay an economic rent for the accommodation provided. The problem is urgent and dangerous. The conditions under which large numbers of our fellow-citizens are housed are a scandal. They are an outrage on decency and morality which, if it is to continue, must rouse such an outburst of justifiable impatience as will compel some hasty solution. That can only be found in eleemosynary building by public authorities out of public funds. Unfortunately we have already started along that road. The Coalition Government, rightly or wrongly, began the system of using State money to erect houses which should be let at rents bearing no relation to the cost of construction, and it is now very difficult to break away suddenly from that policy. But the precedent is serious. State aid is apt to end in State provision, as in the case of education, and unless we are careful we shall find ourselves committed to the principle that working-class housing ought to be provided rent free out of the rates and taxes. And if houses why not food, clothing, and other necessaries ? All parties object to doles of money as weakening the self-respect of the recipient. By no one have they been more unsparingly condemned than by the present Minister of Labour. But State gifts in kind are just as demoralising as doles of money-in some ways more so, since their eleemosynary character is more easily glossed over. For the moment it is not possible to withdraw State aid from housing. But Conservatives will desire to see that course taken as soon as possible, both on the general ground already indicated and because of the vast burden the opposite policy might eventually impose on our national finances. To re-establish housing on a sound economic basis the cost of building must be reduced or the tenants must be enabled to pay increased rents, and in both directions a better organisation of industry would help. For under an improved system, where all engaged, whether in the manufacture of building material or in the building itself, worked together single-mindedly for the success of their common object, production would go up, prices would come down, and at the same time working-class wages generally would be maintained, or even increased. Unemployment, the other great social problem of the day, is in a different category. No doubt anything which added to our efficiency would tend to make it easier to sell our goods and thus to diminish unemployment. In that sense industrial reorganisation might be of service, just as tariff reformers believe that protection might help. But it seems unlikely that either in the one case or the other the effect would be very considerable. It is common ground that the present severe restriction of the labour market is mainly due to the poverty of our old customers, or perhaps more to the dislocation of the credit system on which modern commerce is built. No rapid cure for this disease can be looked for. The evil is too vast and its roots are too deep-seated. Nor can it be hoped that any moderate change of our existing machinery of production or exchange would produce much effect, and a violent change would certainly do more harm than good. All we can hope to do for the present is to apply palliatives as we have been doing. Of these the Trade Facilities Acts are probably the best, and might usefully be extended without too much regard to financial pedantries. After all, it is better for the Treasury to run risks of losing money by not fully secured advances than to pay it away out and out in doles; and it is in every way better to keep men at work in their proper employment than to make grants to those who have become workless. It is on this ground that the proposal to grant a bonus to arable farming may be properly defended, not so much because the numbers of the agricultural population ought to be maintained as because without some such assistance there is grave danger that many of those now so employed will be thrown out of work with a consequent aggravation of our unemployment difficulties. It may be said that if this is reasonable in the case of agriculture, why is it not equally reasonable in the case of other industries in a similar economic position? and there is great force in the observation. It certainly seems a most wasteful proceeding to levy large sums from the employers, the workmen, and the taxpayers, not to keep men in work but to pay them for being idle. In the present emergency, resulting from the war, it seems impossible to avoid this. But unemployment in a milder form is endemic. It recurs with heartrending regularity, and we have so accustomed ourselves to the alternation of booms and slumps that they are regarded as part of the order of nature. In fact, they are nothing of the kind. They are simply defects in our machinery of production, which ought not to be tolerated. It would be far better if the State, instead of subsidising unemployment, were to use its resources to limit the undue expansion as well as the restriction of business, and it should not pass the wit of man to devise means for doing so. For instance, in some cases it might be possible to keep industries going in time of depression by the use of State credit, even if the effect of that were to place a limit on the extent of their recovery when the depression was over. If a reliance on the principle of Unity gives the best hope for the settlement of our domestic difficulties, it is equally applicable to external affairs. Here we are in less disputatious country. Every one accepts in principle the unity of the Empire, though there are differences as to the best method of achieving it. So far as the selfgoverning Dominions are concerned, the differences are, it is to be hoped, not very serious. Such as they are, they are concerned with the policy of preference. Even here they are not so great as might be thought from the violence of the language sometimes used. No one now seriously advocates the imposition of duties in order to give a preference. On the other hand, most people would admit that if duties are imposed for other reasons it is reasonable to give a preference on them to the Dominions. The question of what those duties should be is another one altogether, upon which there are no doubt very strong differences of opinion. In any case, it is difficult to believe that when it comes to the point the present Government will encourage the abrogation of the arrangements made at the last Imperial Conference by the late Administration. No one but the veriest Vol. 241.-No. 479. 2 F pedant can believe that the preferences then agreed to Apart from this question, the Conservative policy of In Foreign Policy there is also a large measure of |