Unemployment / by A.C. Pigou.

  • Pigou, A. C. (Arthur Cecil), 1877-1959.
Date:
[1913?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Unemployment / by A.C. Pigou. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    242/272 (page 238)
    control. This solution, for the limited class of persons now under discussion—a class, be it noted, which, since 1832, has greatly di- minished in relative importance—seems still to hold the field. From these two divisions of poor persons incapable of self-support and not likely to benefit from industrial training, we may pass to the second principal group distinguished on p. 232, namely, those who, though not at the time self-supporting, seem capable, at a reasonable cost to the public purse, of being trained and educated into normal independent citizens. It is plainly to the general interest that such persons should be so trained and educated. For a time, no doubt, the cost would be larger than that involved in mere occasional relief, but it would be a temporary cost, instead of a lasting one. It could, therefore, often be undertaken with profit, even if the non-economic advantages of an independent life, as against one sustained by public or private charity, are left out of ac- count. Practical recognition is given to this fact in the British National Insurance Act. The hundredth clause of that Act provides that, if, after test and inquiry, “ the insurance officer considers that the skill or knowledge of a workman (who repeatedly falls out of employment) is defective, but that there is