CHAPTER  V
THE  ROOT-CAUSE  OF  UNEMPLOYMENT
g  i.  Fallacy  of  the  Piecemeal  Treatment  of  the
Unemployed  Question.
A  misapplied  respect  for  thoroughness  often  leads  students
of  society  to  a  piecemeal  treatment  of  industry  which
blinds  them  to  a  perception  of  large  organic  operations.
It  is  natural  that  men  of  business,  whose  interests  and
sympathies  are  absorbed  in  some  special  trade  and  some
special  locality,  should  mistake  their  knowledge  of  local
symptoms  for  a  thorough  diagnosis  of  industrial  disease.
But  it  is  not  so  creditable  that  statesmen  and  economists
should  do  their  best  to  make  it  appear  that  the  “  unemployed ­
  ”  is  not  one,  but  a  hundred  different  questions  to
be  studied  only  in  detail  and  to  be  solved  by  a  hundred
different  little  local  remedies.  This  detailed  research  is
highly  necessary,  but  it  can  lead  us  only  to  a  knowledge
of  secondary  and  contributory  causes;  no  clear  understanding ­
  of  the  problem  is  attained  until  this  fragmentary
knowledge  is  gathered  into  the  unity  of  a  higher  synthesis.
The  piecemeal  method  which  commends  itself  so
signally  to  Royal  Commissions  upon  Labour  or  Committees
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