ot
impair one whit the inevitability of this result.

This objection is applicable not only to the method of the Salvation
Army, but to many other industrial experiments conducted on a
philanthropic basis. Directly or indirectly bounty-fed labour is brought
into competition with self-supporting labour to the detriment of the
latter. It is sometimes sought to evade the difficulty by confining the
produce which the assisted labour puts upon the open market to classes
of articles which are not for the most part produced in this country,
but which are largely imported from abroad. It is urged that although
shoes and furniture and matches ought not to be produced by assisted
labour for the outside market, it is permissible for an agricultural
colony to replace by home products the large imports in the shape of
cheese, fruit, bacon, poultry, etc., which we now receive from abroad.
Those who maintain this position commonly fail to take into
consideration the exports which go out from this country to pay for
these imports. If this export trade is diminished the trades engaged in
manufacturing the exported goods will suffer, and labour employed in
these trades may be thrown out of employment. This objection may be met
by showing that the goods formerly exported, or an equivalent quantity
of other goods, will be demanded for the increased consumption of the
labourers in the agricultural colony. This is a valid answer if the home
consumption rises sufficiently to absorb the goods formerly exported to
pay for agricultural imports. But even where this just balance is
maintained, allowance must be made for some disturbance of established
trades owing to the fact that the new demand created at home will
probably be for different classes of articles from those which formed
the exports now displaced. The safest use of assisted labour, where the
products are designed for the open market, is in the production of
articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this
country. Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to
prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to
injure the wages of outside labour engaged in similar productions.

Since the existence of an unemployed class who are unemployed because
they are unable, not because they are unwilling, to get work, is proof
of an insufficiency of employment, it is apparent that nothing is of
real assistance which does not increase the net amoun