174 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
is an inadequate and misleading term, and that, in any case, it is very neces- 
sary to go on to a ‘second view.’ Doubtless there is a considerable slow- 
movement mobility—the mobility of a glacier rather than that of a stream. 
It is chiefly exhibited in the inclination of young people (or their parents) 
away from obviously declining trades and towards such trades as happen 
to be within their reach where employment is supposed to be good. And 
then there are occupations—for instance, that of a carpenter—in which 
men can find employment in two or more alternative ‘ industries,’ in the 
wider sense of that word now coming into use—for instance, in building 
proper or in shipbuilding. But the fact seems also to be that a workman 
with definite acquired skill seldom changes his occupation in a country like 
England ; and I imagine this is the case also in the older countries of 
Europe. Even unskilled men, mere ‘ labourers,’ seldom leave ‘ the industry ’ 
—in the wide sense of the term—with which they have been associated. 
This is the case even when better-paid and more regular work is in fact 
available in some other occupation: the reasons are to be found partly 
in inertia, partly in attachment to local ties, but also quite as much in 
the need, or supposed need, of acquiring new skill, and the difficulty as well 
as risk of doing so. And hence, when men become unemployed, they cling 
to their own trade in the hope of being taken on again, to an extent which 
is inconceivable to middle-class people. Still more is this the case when it 
is short time or lowered remuneration they are suffering from. 
Some of the recent developments of industrial organisation and. legis- 
lation in the older countries which most of us regard with satisfaction have 
for their effect to lessen mobility. This is the result, for instance, of trade 
-unionism, among more or less skilled operatives. The assertion that 
‘ trade unions increase mobility of labour ’ 5? is true as between particular 
shops and particular localities in the same industry: it is the reverse of 
true for adult workpeople who desire to shift from one industry to another. 
To say that certain trade unions do in effect impose obstacles to entry 
upon a trade is not necessarily to condemn them : it is but to state a fact. 
Unemployment insurance again, in a country where there are recognised 
standards of wages, is bound, if it recognises a claim to a certain standard 
on the part of unemployed persons, to strengthen the tendency of work- 
people once in a particular trade to stick to it. The National Insurance 
Act of 1920 lays down that a workman is justified in demanding unemploy- 
ment benefit and declining proffered employment if that employment is 
not ‘suitable.’ If employment is offered in the same district—as will 
often be the case—it can be refused if the rate of wages is lower or the 
conditions less favourable than in the employment in which the workman 
was before ordinarily employed. And there seems to be a natural tendency 
in recent decisions of the courts to allow specially trained or skilled men 
and women to refuse unskilled work, especially if it could be thought to 
endanger their return to skilled employment. 
The effect which unemployment insurance may well have in this respect 
is more than hinted at in the comments of several of the Governments on 
the definition of unemployment recently proposed by a Technical Commis- 
sion appointed by the International Labour Office at Geneva. That defini- 
tion ran as follows: ‘ Unemployment may be defined as the condition of a 
87 Beveridge, Unemployment, p. 105, and Index under J'rade Unions. 
