ries. They will
put an end to that portion of unemployment that is merely local or
accidental in character. They are the only means of grappling with the
evils of casual employment, with all its demoralising consequences.
They are capable of aiding the process of dovetailing one seasonal
trade into another. A system of Labour Exchanges, dispensing with the
need for wandering in search of work, will make it possible, for the
first time, to deal stringently with vagrancy. And, lastly, Labour
Exchanges are indispensable to any system of Unemployment Insurance,
as indeed to any other type of honourable assistance to the
unemployed, since they alone can provide an adequate test of the
desire for work and of the reality of unemployment. The authority of
both Reports of the Poor Law Commission may be cited upon these
points; and I shall present this Bill to the House as an important
piece of social and industrial machinery, the need for which has long
been apparent, and the want of which has been widely and painfully
felt.

I said that in the creation of such a system we may profit by the
example of Germany; we may do more, we may improve upon the example of
Germany. The German Exchanges, though co-ordinated and encouraged to
some extent by State and Imperial Governments, are mainly municipal in
their scope. Starting here with practically a clear field and with
the advantage of the experiment and the experience of other lands to
guide us, we may begin upon a higher level and upon a larger scale.
There is reason to believe that the utility of a system like Labour
Exchanges, like utility of any other market, increases in proportion
to its range and scope. We therefore propose, as a first principle,
that our system shall be uniform and national in its character; and
here, again, we are supported both by the Minority and by the Majority
Reports of the Royal Commission.

A Departmental Committee at the Board of Trade has, during the last
six months, been working out the scheme in close detail. The whole
country will be divided into ten or twelve principal divisions, each
with a Divisional Clearing House, and each under a Divisional Chief,
all co-ordinated with the National Clearing House in London.
Distributed among these 10 Divisions in towns of, let us say, 100,000
or upwards will be between 30 and 40 First-class Labour Exchanges; in
towns of 50,000 to 100,000 between 40 and 50 Second-class Exchanges;
and about 150 minor offic