NEED  OF  A  UNIFIED  ORGANIC  TREATMENT  57

upon  “  The  Unemployed  ”  does  not  really  deserve  the
character  it  claims  of  being  “thorough.”  Refusing  to
investigate  the  wider  operation  of  economic  forces  and
discarding  all  “theoretic”  considerations,  these  practical
persons  confine  themselves  to  collecting  elaborate  memoranda ­
  of  minor  facts,  while  ignoring  the  major  facts  by
which  alone  they  can  order  and  interpret  their  details.
When  the  British  mind  is  driven  to  take  in  hand  a
question  like  that  of  “  the  unemployed  ”  its  first  instinct
is  to  chop  it  up  into  a  number  of  little  questions,  and
again  to  subdivide  these  into  an  infinite  number  of
smaller  portions.  It  then  proceeds  to  collect  “  evidence  ”
—huge  quantities  of  little  local  facts  and  figures  which  it
serves  up  in  crude  masses  through  Blue  Books.  An
attempt  is  sometimes  made  to  reach  minor  generalisations
bearing  upon  some  detailed  aspects  of  the  general  question, ­
  but  no  endeavour  is  made  to  focus  the  evidence  in
any  bearing  upon  the  unity  of  the  subject.
§  2.  Need  of  a  Unified  Organic  Treatment.
All  this  work  of  laborious  detail  is  useful,  it  ought
to  be  done,  but  not  the  other  left  undone.  The  method
is  really  not  scientific  but  the  reverse.  It  attempts  to
treat  a  unified  organic  subject  by  a  piecemeal  inorganic
method.  Its  collections  of  facts  never  attempt  to  go  behind ­
  concrete  phenomena  into  the  wider  movements  of
industrial  life,  so  as  to  find  out  what  mal-adjustment  of
the  larger  economic  forces  is  really  represented  in  unemployment. ­
  The  notion  that  scientific  thoroughness  consists
in  breaking  up  an  organic  whole  into  a  number  of  inorganic ­
  pieces  would  be  simply  humorous  if  it  were  not
fraught  with  the  most  injurious  effects  upon  the  reputation