A NATION IS NOT A COMMUNITY 87
find useful occupation in home trade dispose themselves in
foreign countries. Since our enquiry into the facts of
Unemployment was chiefly confined to England, it may
seem that the wider causal treatment is not strictly
relevant. It is indeed quite true that here as elsewhere,
in all industrial problems, the international factor is of so
great importance that a full scientific investigation should
stand upon a basis of international statistics. These we
cannot yet obtain with any degree of accuracy. There
is, however, we have seen, a general agreement both among
business men and scientific experts that those phenomena
of depressed trade which we study chiefly in England and
America are simultaneously visible in different shapes and
degrees throughout those other countries which make up
the industrial world. Since the money-market is the most
perfect of world-markets, the unimpeachable testimony
to a large and general glut of loanable capital affords
conclusive evidence that the “ unemployed ” question on
the side of capital is of general application. On the side
of labour the gigantic armaments maintained by certain
continental countries absorb large masses of labour which
would otherwise swell the ranks of “ unemployed ” or
displace those at present in work. Many structural differences
of industrial society in less developed countries
conceal the waste, which there is every reason to believe
exists.
Lastly it does not devolve on me to prove that all the
phenomena which we have found in England exist elsewhere,
in order to show that there exists “ over-saving ” and an
excess of forms of capital in the whole international
community. If there were no “ unemployment ” of capital
and labour in England, that would not prove there were
