Los Angeles herald., 1910-03-12
EXCHANGE
IS WORTHLESS
LONDON EXPERIMENT FAILS
TO HELP UNEMPLOYED
THOUSANDS SWARM ITS DOORS
SEEKING WORK
Daily Express in Commenting on the
Situation Ridicules So-called
Radlcal-SociaIst
Panacea

LONDON, March 1.-THE labor ex-
lshed by the government have proved
to be useless because they are unable
to provide work for the thousands of
unemployed men in this country. The
Daily Express-tariff reform organ-in
commenting upon the situation, says:
after the imposing Inauguration of
the labor exchanges which are the
Radical-Socialist panacea, one of the
new shortcuts to the millennium of
the workers, there must follow their
edge of the real amount of work
lessness with which these exchanges
are intended to deal. Already enough
is known to show in colors more lurid
than those of heavy statistics, or even
of platform oratory. the extent of this
cancer which is eating into the soul
and body of the country. By thou
sands men have swarmed, and still
are swarming. TO the doors of the new
labor exchanges. These are the men
work to do.
These are the men who have been
thrust out of their jobs, who have
walked the streets. and applied in
every possible quarter in the pitiless
quest OF honest work, who have seen
their homes broken up, who have
watched wife and children go hungry,
whose hearts have been broken by
failure, who must be- very many of
them, near if not actually over the
border line which separates the unem-
ployed from the unemplOyable, This is
the wretched host whom the labor eX-
changes have summoned, with the il
lusory hint of hope, from the misery
into which they found themselves be-
ing relentlessly pushed. This is the
army of despair of which the numbers
will give the whole country newly and
furiously to think.
whence has this army sprung?
When all the inevitable actions and
reactions of trade. all the distress
due to personal unfitness, to failing
health, or weak character, have been
allowed for, whence comes this ap-
palling host of which the government
dare not reveal the extent? 1t comes
from the vicious economic system mis-
called free trade. These are the wreck
age of free imports, the victims of the
bumper, the consequence of the i'm
notation of our home markets on the
shoddy altar of cheapness. In blind
worship of the system which rendered
great services to this country sixty
years ago, when we had no rivals as
manufacturers for the worlds markets,
in obstinate adherence to the gospel
of cheapness, we have broken these
workmen on the wheel of economic
orthodoxy. They have walked the
streets of all our towns, they have
filed our warehouses; and our hos
pitfalls, and they now come rushing
to the labor exchanges, of which the
sonorous title promises relief for in
tolerable suffering. They come crowd
ing upon this new and expensive toy
of radical-socialist Cobdenism, implor-
ing work What do they get? Regis
tration. They are allowed to register
themselves and their want. They are
asked to call again. They are provided
with hope deferred, and that makes
the sick heart beat more feebly than
before. There can be no pretense that
the establishment of labor exchanges
will, under present conditions, do much
to relieve all this misery. There is no
work for the workless. Registration
will not make it,