If public bodies are to employ more labour, when labour is excessive, and pay a wage which shall be above the market price, it must be clearly understood that the portion of the wages which represents the "uncommercial" aspect of the contract is just as much public charity as the half-crown paid as out-door relief under the present Poor Law.

Lastly, the establishment of State or municipal workshops for the "unemployed" has no economic connection with the "socialist" policy, by which the State or municipality should assume control and management of railways, mines, gas-works, tramways, and other works into which the element of monopoly enters.

Such a "socialist" policy, if carried out, would not directly afford any relief to the unemployed.

For, in the first place, the labour employed in these new public departments would be chiefly skilled, and not unskilled.
Moreover, so far as the condition of the "workers" was concerned, the nationalization, or municipalization of these works would not imply any increased demand for labour, but merely the transfer of a number of employes from private to the public service.

The public control of departments of industry, which are now in private hands, would not, so long as it was conducted on a commercial footing in the public interest, furnish either direct, or indirect, relief to "the unemployed." A reduction of hours of labour in the case of workers transferred to the public service, might afford employment to an increased number of skilled labourers, and might indirectly operate in reducing the number of unemployed.