UNEMPLOYMENT  IN  PUBLIC  SERVICES

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of  labour-power  as  well  as  a  great  irregularity  in  its
demand  in  these  trades,  but  the  very  large  register  of
clerks  and  messengers,  warehousemen  and  porters,  I  am
disposed  rather  to  impute  partly  to  the  fact  that  such
workers  often  cannot  take  the  ordinary  means  of  seeking
work  by  personal  application  which  is  open  to  those
engaged  in  manufactures  and  large-scale  industries,  and
partly  to  the  absence  of  trade  union  organisation  upon
which  most  skilled  and  some  unskilled  workers  rely  to
assist  them  to  a  place.  But  though  the  classes  of  roadtransport
  are  evidently  subject  to  great  irregularity,  against
this  must  be  set  the  steady  and  large  employment  on
railways  and  in  large  departments  of  navigation.
On  the  contrary  dockers  and  all  branches  of  riverside
labour  will  yield  a  very  large  quantity  of  “waste.”  If  we
accept  Mr.  Geoffrey  Drage’s  estimate  of  the  number  of
London  dock  labourers  at  22,000  (exclusive  of  those
who  drift  in  occasionally  from  other  trades),  and  compare
d  with  the  average  of  those  actually  employed  on  any
given  day,  which  for  the  year  1894  amounted  to  7,006,
We  shall  perceive  that  after  allowance  is  made  for  the
fairly  full  work  of  “  permanent  ”  hands,  the  quantity  of
unemployment  for  the  mass  must  be  enormous.  Much
of  this  irregularity  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of  a  trade
so  largely  dependent  on  season  and  on  weather,  which
yields  a  difference  of  about  25  per  cent,  for  the  numbers
employed  in  March  and  in  November,  while  the  daily
fluctuations  are  much  wider.  But  even  if  we  take  the
maximum  employed  on  the  busiest  day  of  the  year  we
shall  find  it  falls  short  by  some  thousands  of  the  number
°f  “  dockers  ”,  indicating  a  large  net  surplus  of  “  unemployed ­
  ”  not  wanted  even  for  short  emergencies.  In  other