UNEMl'LOYMENT 131 



these essential conditions. It becomes evident, therefore, that 

 Mr. Shackletou's plan is but a mere nostrum, and that it 

 reduces the whole question to the level of absurdity. 



These are but a few examples of the multitudinous efforts 

 that are being made by Municipal Councils, by public and 

 private effort, by public philanthropy and private charity, and 

 notably, through the up-to-date practical Trades Unions, to 

 solve a hopeless problem. 



Such remedies as these are, after all, but dealing in pal- 

 liatives, and this disease of acute distress and corroding 

 unemployment is too deep-seated to be affected by measures 

 of this description. These, and numerous other remedial 

 measures of many kinds, have been tried over and over again 

 during the last quarter of a century and more ; and the one 

 simple fact that the evil has grown and developed, and the 

 disease spread to such an extent as to endanger the entire 

 body politic, is the best proof that such remedies have p7'oved an 

 unmitigated failure. 



And so they will always prove a failure, because in asking 

 trades and manufactures to come to the people's rescue, when 

 they have for years past persistently and uniformly failed to 

 afford them full employment and support, is to ask that which 

 is obviously impossible ; and if we will but take the trouble to 

 think the matter out for ourselves, this fact becomes startliugly 

 apparent. 



The folly of expecting such sources of employment to 

 lielp our workers in the present and in the future, when they 

 have failed to do so in the past, is to rely upon a broken reed, 

 particularly so as it is beyond dispute that British trade is not 

 only not holding its own with foreign competitors, but that 

 it has in reality lost its i^lace in international propoi'tional 

 'progression. 



In order that the public may know to what uses national 

 statistics are put by certain newspapers to buttress a falling 

 structure, a specimen of the subterfuges resorted to is appended. 



The following statement of six mouths' trade appeared in 

 the Daily Chronicle of August '11, 1908 : — 



Lmpokts 



Percentage 

 Ifloe. 1907. 1908. of Increase or 



Decrease.* 



Germany. . . . 198,287,000 21.3,003,000 204,554,000 + 3 



Belgium .... 04,087,000 73,380,000 08,077,000 + 



France .... 113,949,000 127,388,000 121,944,000 + 7 



United States . . 132,783,000 150,510,000 108,844,000 - 18 



United Kingdom 250,131,000 270,807,000 209,010,000 + 5 



* The percentages of increase and decrease are worked out by the author. 



