4

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  UNEMPLOYED

or  otherwise  lifted  permanently  off  the  labour-market,  the
building  trades  would  presently  suffer  from  a  deficiency
of  men.  Nor  are  they  necessarily  insufficiently  employed.
There  may  be  work  enough  for  all,  but  the  trade  is  such
that  the  work  it  offers  has  to  be  concentrated  in  certain
parts  of  the  year.”
This  view  of  compensation  forcibly  recalls  the  “  economic ­
  man  ”  of  the  old  economists,  with  his  infinite  capacity
for  calculating  chances,  an  absolute  freedom  to  select  his
employment,  and  a  full  power  to  extort  from  his  employer
a  higher  wage  to  balance  any  specific  disadvantage
attending  his  work.  Such  a  man,  being  in  our  present
case  a  bricklayer,  might  be  supposed  to  obtain  such
earnings,  and  so  to  regulate  his  expenditure  as  to  hibernate ­
  comfortably  during  the  annual  period  of  slackness.
The  actual  bricklayer,  though  he  doubtless  can  make
some  provision  against  the  idle  season,  is  not  economically ­
  strong  enough  to  fully  discount  in  his  earnings  the
irregularity  incident  to  his  trade,  still  less  is  the  bricklayer’s ­
  labourer  able  to  do  so.
If  the  a  priori  reasoning  in  the  Board  of  Trade
view  be  accepted,  it  may  be  pushed  so  far  as  to
show  that  all  workers  are  able  to  discount  all  “ordinary
trade  risks,”  and  to  obtain  wages  adequate  to  support
them  during  such  portion  of  the  year  as  trade  statistics ­
  show  to  represent  the  average  “  unemployment  ”  in
that  trade.
The  casual  docker,  the  fur-puller,  and  all  the  workers
in  “season”  trades,  whose  irregularity  can  be  foreseen,
ought,  according  to  this  theory,  to  be  able  to  make
adequate  provision  against  the  “off”  period,  however
long  it  may  be;  and  since  the  work  of  all  of  them  is