ABSTRACT
Unemployment, Mills declares, had become a national problem, but state provision for the poor was degrading and insufficient. He repeats his argument from Poverty and the State that parliament should undertake ‘radical reform’ to create a self-supporting labour colony for the unemployed using waste lands in all 649 poor law unions. Mills indicates that the land was being held by five trustees and that if the project realized a significant profit, they would use the money for the good of the village and its inhabitants or for the growth of the labour colony. The village, Mills mentions, had a guesthouse where people could have a ‘holiday’ to see the colony in action. According to a newspaper article in 1900, ‘divisions and different ideals soon asserted themselves, and after a stormy existence’, Mills was forced to give up on his colony after eight years.
