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Rh working are fifteen or sixteen instead of the ten of other nights and twice as many men are required. These Friday night men, many hundreds in number, pick up odd jobs the rest of the week. At the factory gates every night during the week, a number of men are always hanging about ready to be taken on in an emergency, or to fill the place of any man who, according to a very common custom, has “ taken a night off.” In busy marketing neighbourhoods, a whole class of butchers' assistants are engaged only for Fridays and Saturdays. Analogous arrangements exist in many other trades. Moreover, in every trade there are men whom the employer takes on only when he has a sudden and temporary press of business. They may be the “ glut men " of the customs department or the Christmas hands of the post office. Every tramway undertaking, municipal or commercial, has its reserve of extra drivers, conductors, yard-men, washers, &c., who get a day's work now and then when they are wanted. At Liverpool, and indeed in all large towns, there is a whole class of casual carmen, who are taken on for the job as required."

Then there are the accidental circumstances which incidentally produce unemployment, such as the displacement of labour by the progress of invention and improvement. The example of the distress brought upon the hand-loom weavers by the invention of the power-loom is only one of many, but the process is continually going on. The change, for example, from horse carriages to motor cars has brought much unemployment in its train. Then there is the unemployment due to decaying or declining trades, brought about through a persistent falling off of the demand, or through some change of process or of fashion; the removal of an industry from one place to another, the displacement of adult labour by that of women and boys, the continuous migration of unskilled labour from the country to the towns, and the depression in general trade caused by the occurrence of something unforeseen, as war. Then too, there are to be added the numberless frictions of industrial life, all contributing their quota to unemployment, such as the bankruptcy of an employer, changes in management, the arbitrariness of a foreman, &c. There are also what may be termed the political causes of unemployment, which depend on the commercial policy of the nation, in so far as it adopts Free Trade or Protection.

Recognizing the existence of the problem of unemployment, and putting aside the possibility of knowing exactly its extent, we have to consider the remedies which have been advanced for its solution. These may be classified as temporary and permanent. Temporary expedients, whether in the nature of voluntary relief by individuals or organized societies, or on the larger scale of municipal or state organized relief works, more properly fall under the description of charity (see ). Two particular methods of permanent remedy, however, are especially favoured. The first of these is the establishment of a system of labour exchanges, national in character if possible, by which it is claimed that machinery would at once be set in motion for assisting that mobility which is so effective for the proper utilization of labour and which, even with the modern facilities for travel, labour so lacks at the present time. Labour exchanges would also, it is argued,

facilitate the collection of data for the enumeration and classification of the unemployed. Labour exchanges have been long established in Germany. “ There is a network of labour exchanges of various types. The most important. . . are the public and municipal exchanges. There are over 200 such, among the 700 odd exchanges, filling now 150,000 places a month, which report regularly to the imperial statistical officer. Practically there is a public general exchange in every town of over 50,000 inhabitants, and in a very large proportion of the smaller towns. Most of the public labour exchanges date from 1894 to 1896 or received a fresh impulse then ” (Report of Commission on Poor Laws, 1909). The causes of the success of the German system of labour exchanges are attributed by the Poor Law Commissioners to (a) the high standing given to the movement by the

advocacy and practical assistance of all public authorities, town councils, state governments, imperial government, &c.; (b) the association through combined committees of employers and employees in the management of the exchanges; (c) the unequivocal character of the exchanges as industrial and not relief institutions; (d) the excellent arrangements for the use of telephonic, telegraphic and postal facilities by the exchanges, and (e) the preferential railway fares for men sent to a situation.

An attempt was made in England to start labour exchanges by the Labour Bureaux (London) Act 1902, which gave metropolitan boroughs power to establish and maintain bureaux, to be paid for out of the general rate. Before this act, however, certain municipalities here and there had made experiments in the way of exchanges, but they were never very successful, for they had no knowledge of what they intended to do; they were not properly staffed; they were hampered by bad rules; they were nearly all started in times of depression, exactly the wrong time to start a labour exchange, the time to start it being when trade is going up. The act of 1902 was a= failure because it merely permitted, and did not compel borough councils to establish bureaux, and consequently only a very small part of the metropolis was covered, and there was no interchange of ideas amongst those established. However, a fresh attempt was made to establish exchanges over a greater part of the United Kingdom by the Labour Exchanges Act 1909. The Labour Exchanges Act defines a labour exchange as any office or place used for the purpose of collecting and furnishing information, either by the keeping of registers or otherwise, respecting employers who desire to engage workpeople and workpeople who seek engagement or employment. The act gave the Board of Trade power to establish and maintain labour exchanges in such places as they might think fit, and to collect and furnish information to employers and workpeople. An important provision of the act was the authorization of advances by way of loan towards meeting the expenses of workpeople travelling to places where employment is found for them through a labour exchange. The regulations of the exchanges provide that no person shall suffer any disqualification or be otherwise prejudiced on account of refusing to accept employment found for him through a labour exchange where the grotuid of refusal is that a trade dispute which affects his trade exists, or that the wages offered are lower than those current in the trade in the district where the employment is found. The act also empowers the Board of Trade to establish advisory committees in connexion with the exchanges and imposes penalties for making false statements for the purpose of obtaining employment or procuring workpeople. For the carrying out of the act the whole of the United Kingdom was mapped out into divisions, with a divisional inspector at the head of each. In all the more important towns of each division exchanges were established, classified according to the population of the town. All the exchanges are in telephonic communication either with each other or with a divisional clearinghouse, the divisional clearing-house in turn being in communication with a central clearing-house in London. The advantage of the English system of labour exchanges will be found in the fact that it is a national system, with the support of the state behind it. Unless, as has been proposed, it is made compulsory in all large trades, much of its success will depend on the patronage extended to it by employers, which in its turn must be justified by the efficiency of the service rendered. Patronage by government and municipal authorities, while making an imposing addition to the returns of situations found, will not necessarily be an effective guarantee that the true objects of the exchanges are being fulfilled.

The German labour registries are of seven principal types: ther private registry office, maintained by ordinary agents for purposes of gain, and occupying itself chiefly with the placing of domestic servants; the travellers' homes and relief stations, which endeavour to find situations for their inmates-their success is not great, as the better elements of the labouring classes avoid them; trade union registries maintained by trade unions to assist their members in