s.

Sir, it is on these grounds, and within these limits, that I ask for a
Second Reading for this Bill.

The principles and objects are scarcely disputed here. Let us go into
Committee and set to work upon the details, actuated by a
single-minded desire to produce a practical result. It is by the
evidences of successful experiment that, more than any other way, we
shall forward and extend the area of our operations; and in passing
this Bill the House will not only deal manfully with a grave and
piteous social evil, but it will also take another step along that
path of social organisation into which we have boldly entered, and
upon which the Parliaments of this generation, whatever their
complexion, will have to march.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Otherwise called "The Trade Boards Bill."

LABOUR EXCHANGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

HOUSE OF COMMONS, _May 19, 1909_

The functions of Government in relation to industrial life may be
divided into three categories--discipline, organisation, and relief.
The control and regulation of industrial conditions by penal and
disciplinary powers belong to the Home Office, the relieving and
curative processes are entrusted to the Local Government Board, and
the organisation of industry falls to the province of the Board of
Trade. The proposals which I now submit to the House are concerned
only with organisation; they can be judged only in relation to that
section of the subject; they do not pretend to stretch beyond it, or
to include other not less important aspects; and I ask that they shall
not be impugned, because, in dealing with the evils which properly
fall within that sphere, they do not extend to other evils that lie
without it.

I ask permission to introduce a Bill for the establishment of a
national system of Labour Exchanges. There is high authority for this
proposal. The Majority and Minority representatives of the Poor Law
Commission, differing in so much else, are agreed unanimously in its
support. "In the forefront of our proposals," says the Majority
Report, "we place Labour Exchanges." "This National Labour Exchange,"
says the Minority Report, "though in itself no adequate remedy, is the
foundation of all our proposals. It is, in our view, an indispensable
condition of any real reform." The National Conference of Trade Union
Delegates, convened by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union
Congress, of March 19, 1909, resolved unanimously: "That this
Con