SHORTAGE OF WORK IN OUR TRADES 101 



Mr. Balfour is an able debater, a capable and astute leader 

 of a great party, and he is, moreover, no mean, pettifogging 

 politician, but a wise and far-seeing statesman who compels 

 the respect and admiration of even his political opponents ; but 

 he is, nevertheless, human, and liable to liuman fallibility. 

 In this instance he has obviously committed an error of 

 judgment. 



In discussing so momentous a question as that involving 

 the welfare of a nation, the people should not permit their 

 judgment to be influenced against their own convictions, even 

 by so great an authority as the ex-Prime Minister of the 

 United Kingdom. 



Mr. Balfour's Contentions measured by General 



Eesults 



Let us now look at the matter from one or two other points 

 of view, to see if general results support Mr. Balfour's con- 

 tentions. 



Success is a standard by which we may fairly measure most 

 things in this world ; and if a work yields good substantial 

 results, and stands satisfactorily the practical tests of ordinary 

 life, it may safely be called a success. 



Mr. Balfour's " only possible mode " of dealing with the 

 question has, as is well known, been tried for the last thirty 

 years or more, and it has failed so unmistakably as to resiilt, 

 firstly, in acute and widespread poverty and overflowing 

 workhouses ; secondly, in a huge surplus of unemployed, 

 which is the bugbear of each successive Government ; and 

 thirdly, in a still greater mass of necessitous people of all 

 classes who, but for the continual effort and material aid of 

 that multitude of philanthropic people who give untold millions 

 annually, would surely starve and die. 



It may be contended that although these are facts plainly 

 stated and legitimately quotetl, they nevertheless need not 

 necessarily apply to the future, because the expansion of 

 national trade would be so phenomenal and so abiding as to 

 preclude the possibility of its failing us as a sure means of 

 affording employment for every worker in the country ; hnt it 

 is obvious, from the experience of the past, that such a con- 

 tention would be as unreliable and dangerous as it is specious 

 and misleading. 



Our national trade has passed tlirough periods of phenomenal 

 expansion and great prosperity time and again during tlie last 

 fifty years or so ; but what has it ever left behind save periods 

 of reaction and depression, of lack of work and widespread 



