4

MACHINERY  AND  UNEMPLOYMENT

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alone  contributes  a  thorough  and  a  scientific  treatment  is
very  prevalent  among  many  of  those  who  claim  to  speak  with
authority  on  the  questions  of  poverty  and  unemployment.
§  3-  Connection  of  Machinery  with  Unemployment.
It  can,  I  think,  be  clearly  shown  that  the  great  mass
of  “  unemployment”  and  “  under-employment”  is  not  due
to  those  “minor”  leakages  which  belong  to  the  character
of  certain  trades  or  even  to  the  detailed  changes  of
machinery,  industrial  method,  and  locale  of  markets,  which
we  saw  were  verœ  causa:  in  the  problem.  At  certain  periods,
large  sudden  displacements  have,  of  course,  been  attributable
to  the  substitution  of  machinery  for  handlabour  or  to  some
greatpolitical  event  affecting  markets.  If,  however,  we  confine
ourselves  to  British  trade  in  recent  years  we  cannot  explain
by  these  means  the  great  fluctuations  of  employment.
It  is  a  mistake  to  regard  as  one  of  the  necessary
effects  of  improvements  in  machinery  and  their  substitution
for  hand-labour  a  great  mass  of  unemployment.  The
introduction  of  new  machinery  into  a  trade  must  under
existing  circumstances  inflict  a  twofold  injury  upon  those
whose  labour  it  affects.  It  reduces  or  destroys  the  marketvalue
  of  the  special  skill  they  have  acquired,  and  it
imposes  upon  some  or  all  of  them  the  necessity  of  finding
other  work,  where  their  special  skill  is  not  available.  But
if  the  general  condition  of  the  labour-market  were  such
that  the  demand  for  labour  pressed  upon  the  supply,
such  displaced  labour  would  be  rapidly  re-absorbed  and
Hie  total  waste  by  “  unemployment”  would  be  very  small.
In  the  prosperous  period  1871-4  machinery  made  considerable ­
  strides  in  many  English  industries,  and  many
u  savings”  of  labour  were  effected,  especially  in  the  metal