TRANSFERABILITY  OF  LABOUR

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itself  from  one  place  to  another  place,  and  from  one
trade  to  another  trade.
So  far  as  the  transferability  from  one  locality  to  another
is  concerned,  the  same  causes  which  have  expanded  the
area  of  the'market  for  most  commodities  have  certainly
expanded  the  labour-market.  A  man  who  is  thrown  out
of  work  by  some  local  decline  of  trade  is  more  easily
and  more  quickly  able  to  find  an  opening  in  the  same
trade  in  another  place  than  was  once  the  case,  but  I  do
not  believe  that  this  increased  fluidity  of  labour  has  kept
pace  with  the  increased  fluidity  of  general  trade.  Adam
Smith’s  dictum  still  holds  good  that  “a  man  is  of  all
sorts  of  luggage  the  most  difficult  to  be  transported.”
The  increased  ability  of  the  modern  worker  who  is
displaced  from  one  trade  to  find  employment  in  another
trade  is  frequently  asserted  by  economists.  The  tendency
is,  it  is  maintained,  to  substitute  “general”  ability  for
special  manual  skill.  Formerly  a  handicrafts-man  spent
many  years  in  getting  a  particular  form  of  manual  dexterity,
and,  if  he  were  obliged  to  find  some  other  occupation,
he  would  have  to  acquire  a  new  skill  in  the  same  slow
fashion,  besides  being  limited  in  his  new  choice  by  the
specialisation  of  powers  which  had  warped  his  general
development.  Nowadays,  it  is  said,  a  man,  engaged  in
some  particular  process,  who  is  displaced  can  learn  in  a
few  weeks  or  months  another  process  in  another  trade,
or  can  find  in  another  trade  a  species  of  work  analogous
to  that  upon  which  he  was  formerly  engaged.  The  broad
question  whether  there  exists  for  the  average  workman
to-day  an  increased  transferability  of  his  labour-power
depends  for  its  answer  upon  two  sets  of  considerations.
The  first  has  reference  to  the  structure  of  trades.