16  THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  UNEMPLOYED
certain  period,  after  which  they  are  left  to  shift  for
themselves.  Not  only  among  trade  union  members  of
skilled  trades,  but  throughout  the  entire  field  of  industry,
the  shortness  of  employment  is  most  largely  represented
in  the  progressive  under-employment  of  the  middle-aged.
In  many  departments  of  labour,  for  example,  among
miners,  sailors,  mule-spinners,  in  metal  and  machine  making,
it  is  practically  impossible  for  a  man  to  have  any  security
of  work  over  the  age  of  forty-five  or  fifty.  Notwithstanding ­
  all  efforts  to  retain  the  appearance  of  youth,  he
finds  employment  slipping  from  his  grasp  ;  his  skill  and
experience  avail  him  little  in  competition  with  the  younger
generation  who  can  outstrip  him  in  pace  and  muscular
activity.  In  ideal  schemes  of  industrial  society  it  is  often
held  that  the  twenty  or  twenty-five  years  which  form  the
prime  of  manhood  or  womanhood  afford  an  ample  period
for  the  expenditure  of  labour-power  in  the  social  service.
Under  present  conditions  the  early  compulsory  retirement,
not  into  honourable  and  comfortable  leisure,  but  into  a
miserable  and  degrading  struggle  for  the  casual  means  of
a  bare  subsistence,  which  becomes  more  precarious  as
old  age  advances,  must  be  accounted  one  of  the  most
terrible  forms  of  the  problem  of  unemployment.
§  5.  Prime  Object  of  Unions  to  Avoid
Unemployment.
In  estimating  the  returns  of  “  unemployed”  by  the
textile,  the  mining,  and  other  industries,  it  must  be  borne
in  mind  that  many  of  the  strongly  organised  trades
distribute  the  loss  of  employment  among  all  their  members,
instead  of  allowing  some  to  become  wholly  unemployed,
working  short  time  instead  of  allowing  a  reduction  of  the