(12) It would only be possible for _Government_ to carry out such large schemes of afforestation or of reclamation of waste lands as would effectually grapple with the whole problem.
There is, however, one question we must briefly deal with in considering either private or public action.
It is said that if employment is found for the unemployed, if vagrant and other colonies are formed, the result will only be to displace by their products other workers. There is, it seems, a kind of vicious circle, by which, for example, if prisoners made brushes, other brushmakers are displaced, and so on.
It is forgotten that every day new and extensive businesses arise, and their competition with others is not regarded as an evil. (These often undersell, colonies need not.) But besides this it has been found by investigation into the working of German labour colonies that their products do not disturb the labour market. To a great extent the colonists are engaged in supplying their _own_ need.[73] Kropatkin also shows how the more careful cultivation of the land enables it to maintain a larger population. To place the waste man on the waste land seems to be true social economy. It must be remembered also that, to the extent to which a pauper is made self-supporting, the money that before supported him is set free. If, for instance, the cost of a pauper could be reduced from £12 (English workhouse) to £5 (Belgian labour colony), £7 would be set free for other expenditure. The weight of the Poor Law is heavy upon us. In London alone indoor paupers rose from 29,458 in 1857 to 61,545 in 1891. Besides this, enormous sums are spent in charity,[74] which forms as it were an additional tax on the well-disposed. An effective law dealing with idleness would tone up our whole population, and dispose many to work. The home market would improve as taxation was lightened. We must go to the _root_ of social disease.
The Continental system of providing an incentive to labour in the shape of a very small wage is well worth consideration.[75] It makes government easy and provides for sifting one class from another. It is not sufficiently recognised that undesirables act as social microbes. If they can be got to live under restraint, much evil is averted. The modern organization of labour is such that it ought to be possible to place our Poor Law on a sound economic basis, instead of the present haphazard system. The cost of administration as it is, goes up by leaps and bounds without adequate return.[76]