tration, whether it is desirable to keep women in total idleness. We may doubt whether it would be possible or even desirable, by a cast-iron law, to exclude a young man with ambitions from his workshop, where he may be receiving a much more valuable education than he can get in Polytechnics, and where he is earning something for the support of himself and family, and his work is "sweetened by the prospect of reward." But, supposing that all these proposals[1] were carried out, there would still, say the Minority, be a surplus of labour to be dealt with, and, to use their own expression, "honourably maintained " by the Ministry for Labour. This maintenance would take several forms. The first would be that of adequate "home aliment," on condition of daily attendance at a training establishment. In the second, the head of the family would enter the training establishment and his family would be maintained outside. The third would be the purely residential colony, reserved chiefly for single men. The fourth, the detention colony for the lowest class of labour with "morbid" proclivities. But a large number of men who are now in the labour market, but partially disabled, would be sifted out altogether, and handed over to the Public Health Authority. If unable to do full work, they would not be allowed to do any. We have already seen that by the "dovetailing" process a large number of men would be ousted altogether from the labour market, and it remains to be seen how these are to be dealt with in detail. The Minority tell us (p. 1152) that in Liverpool out of 15,000 men at the docks, 5000 are "surplus labour," and so would have to be excluded from the labour market. If in a single industry in a single town it becomes necessary to maintain 5000 men in training estab-
- ↑ We may observe that all these proposals are based upon the often exposed "lump of labour" fallacy.
