28
THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED
purls than London work is not quite so irregular and
the permanent surplus of “ dockers ” is probably much
less, but in spite of all efforts to organise and regulate
dock employment, the total “ waste ” of labour in this
branch of transport trade must be very large.
On the whole, the workers engaged in “ the conveyance
of men, goods, and messages ” would yield a far lower
rate of unemployment than the manufactures. We must
next add in the rapidly growing department of public
services, State, county and municipal, together with the
semi-public services of gas, water, electricity, etc. These
routine services are essentially regular and would yield
no appreciable quantity of “unemployment” either in
their civil or military departments, unless we include
under the latter the lamentable and criminal waste of
“labour” represented by the constant flow of soldiers
from regular military service into the Army Reserve,
which helps to swell the standing host of untrained and
low-skilled labour. One other large class of wage-earners
requires mention, those engaged in domestic service.
The conditions of this work impose a high degree of
regularity in employment, and though the multiplication of
registry-offices indicates a large constant flow from “place”
to “place”, which doubtless involves a certain “leakage”
of employment, there cannot, if we take the country as
a whole, be a large percentage of “unemployment” or
direct “ waste ” in domestic service. I think that the
“unemployment” of servants which figures considerably
in the accounts of Labour Bureaux, belongs rather to
the large-town problem of general low-skilled labour than
to the specific conditions of domestic service. Some oversupply,
however, in the lower grades, must be admitted.
