STRIKES 57 



a grimy home amid hideous surroundings, and 

 hears more clamour for additional food than 

 thanksgiving after meals — such a man has no 

 such inducement, and is likely to make his cir- 

 cumstances even worse by drowning his unhappi- 

 ness in drink. 



When men work for employers, disagreements 

 often arise, and then the want of harmony, of 

 a common object, makes itself felt ; it becomes 

 difficult to bring about a settlement, and there 

 follows a lock-out or a strike. In either case, 

 for a longer or shorter period, the capital of 

 the employers and workmen lies idle, and this 

 is a cause of waste — a tremendous cause, now 

 that the most trivial differences lead to great 

 strikes, and the more serious because the stop- 

 page of work of one kind often compels men of 

 other trades to lie idle, however little they 

 may wish it. 



A fourth cause of waste is carelessness. The 

 destruction of a building by fire is nearly always 

 preventible, the loss of a ship at sea is so in 

 most cases. Such losses, though by some con- 

 sidered good for trade, are really waste. A 

 factory, or warehouse, or farmstead burnt down, 

 or a ship lost at sea, or railway stock destroyed 

 in a collision — these must be replaced, and this 

 for a time gives unexpected employment to a 

 number of men. But these men ought not to 

 be so employed ; they are really misemployed, 

 just in the same way as men doing over again 

 work that was badly done are misemployed. 



I^astly, a kind of waste arises from the neces- 



