remedied by free state employment bureaus which shall serve as
distributing agencies; there is almost always work enough and to spare
in some parts of the country, and usually not far away. But more than
this is necessary; the State must see that work is offered every man
who is able to work. All sorts of public works need unskilled laborers
in every city of the country; there is digging to be done, shoveling
and sweeping and carting. There are roads to be built, rivers to be
dredged, parks to be graded, buildings to be erected, a thousand things
to be done. It will be quite feasible, when wages are generally
adequate, for the cities, by general agreement, to offer work to all
applicants at a wage so low as not to attract men away from other
employments, and yet to enable them to support their families decently.
The low wages given will save the city much money directly, as well
as saving it the care of the indigent. But it will be a feasible plan
only when the city's jobs cease to be used as a means of vote-buying
by politicians and are offered where they are needed. [Footnote: 1 See
W.H. Beveridge, Unemployment. J.A. Hobson, The Problem of the
Unemployed. Alden and Hayward, The Unemployable and the
Unemployed. C. S. Loch, Methods of Social Advance, chap. IX.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 8, pp. 168, 453, 499. Review
of Reviews, vol. 9, pp. 29, 179. Charities Review, vol. 3, pp. 221,
323. Independent, vol. 77, p.363. National Municipal Review,
vol. 3, p.366. The unemployment which is the result of laziness
must be cured by compulsory work as in farmcolonies, which
have been successful in Europe. Cf. Edmond Kelly, The
Elimination of the Tramp.]

(3) The third important cause of poverty is sickness and the death
of wage earners. Here the way is clear. When the State has taken the
measures we have enumerated for the public health, when it provides