es, consisting of Third-class Exchanges,
Sub-Offices, and Waiting-rooms, which last will be specially used in
connection with Dock decasualisation.

The control and direction of the whole system will be under the Board
of Trade. But in order to secure absolute impartiality as between the
interests of capital and labour, Joint Advisory Committees, to contain
in equal numbers representatives of employers and work-people, will be
established in the principal centres. Thus we shall apply to the local
management of Labour Exchanges the same principle of parity of
representation between workmen and employers under impartial guidance
and chairmanship, that we have adopted in the administration of the
Trade Boards Bill, and that, _mutatis mutandis_, is the governing
feature of the Courts of Arbitration which have recently been set up.
If this Bill should obtain the assent of Parliament without undue
delay, I should hope to bring the system into simultaneous operation
over the whole country, so far as practicable, in the early months of
next year. Temporary premises will be procured in all cases in the
first instance; but a programme of building has been prepared, which
in ten years will by a gradual process enable in all the principal
centres these temporary premises to be replaced by permanent
buildings.

The expense of this system will no doubt be considerable. Its ordinary
working will not need a sum less than about L170,000 per year, and
during the period when the building is going on the expenditure will
rise to about L200,000 per year.

We hope that the Labour Exchanges will become industrial centres in
each town. We hope they will become the labour market. They may, where
necessary, provide an office where the Trade Board, if there is one,
will hold its meetings. We desire to co-operate with trade unions on
cordial terms, while preserving strict impartiality between capital
and labour in disputed matters. It may, for instance, be possible for
trade unions to keep their vacant-book in some cases at the exchanges.
The structure of those Exchanges may in some cases be such as to
enable us to have rooms which can be let to trade unions at a rent,
for benefit and other meetings, so as to avoid the necessity under
which all but the strongest unions lie at the present time of
conducting their meetings in licensed premises. The Exchanges may, as
they develop, afford facilities for washing, clothes-mending, and for
non-alcoho