4Ó  THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  UNEMPLOYED

elusion,  that  “  unemployment”  is  due  to  individual  causes.
Such  conclusion  is,  of  course,  wholly  fallacious.  Personal
causes,  no  doubt,  explain  in  a  large  measure  who  are  the
individuals  that  shall  represent  the  io  per  cent,  “unemployed”, ­
  but  they  are  in  no  true  sense  even  contributory
causes  of  the  “unemployment.”  When  economic  causes
lower  the  demand  for  labour,  competition  will  tend  to
squeeze  out  of  employment  those  individuals  who,  for
reasons,  sometimes  moral,  sometimes  industrial,  are  less
valuable  workers  than  their  fellows.  If  these  individuals
had  not  been  morally  or  industrially  defective  they  would
have  kept  their  work,  but  necessarily  by  pushing  out
other  io  per  cent.  Personal  causes  do  not  to  any  appreciable ­
  extent  cause  unemployment,  but  largely  determine  who
shall  be  unemployed.  The  individualist-moralist  is  keen  to
detect  the  fallacy  involved  in  supposing  that  poverty  can
be  stopped  by  regarding  it  as  a  number  of  holes  to  be  filled  up
by  pouring  in  promiscuous  charity.  But  he  does  not  perceive
that  this  analysis  and  treatment  of  “  unemployment”  involves
a  fallacy  closely  analogous  to  that  which  he  has  condemned.
§  2.  Nature  of  the  Individualist  Fallacy.—Character
Determining  Who  Shall  le  Unemployed.
The  moral  and  industrial  elevation  of  defective  individuals ­
  is,  for  their  individual  sakes  and  on  general  moral
grounds,  highly  desirable,  but  it  will  have  no  direct  effect
in  diminishing  unemployment.
This  may  appear  to  some  a  hard  saying.  But  it  is
strictly  true.  The  effect  of  the  McKinley  tariff  in  causing
depression  of  trade  and  unemployment  in  Bradford  is
not  really  dependent  upon  the  moral  or  industrial  qualities
of  those  workers  who  are  displaced.  If  these  latter,  who