— 
F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS, 175 
worker who is both able and willing to work but is unable to find employ- 
ment suitable to his qualifications and reasonable expectations.’ The impli- 
eation of such a clause in a European country is indicated in the approving 
comment of the Government of Finland: ‘ Skill in a trade and the possi- 
bilities of remuneration depending thereon generally fix the reasonable 
expectations of a worker.’ On the other hand, the Governments of new 
countries like Canada and South Africa are unwilling to recognise the claim 
which seems to be involved in ‘ reasonable expectations.’ The explanation 
is that the industrial conditions are in fact very different. This is well 
explained by the Government of South Africa: ‘In the Union, with the 
exception of clearly defined trades . . . workers do not confine themselves 
to specified occupations, as they do in older countries where occupations 
and industries are more sharply defined or firmly established.’ *8 
In a work which is among the most outstanding products of English 
economic inquiry in the present century, and which has had powerful 
influence on English legislation, I find the sentence: ‘Adam Smith and 
his followers were right in emphasizing the mobility of labour as the cardinal 
requirements of industry.’ *®® In the table of contents this appears as : 
“The demand of economists for mobility of labour.’ Adam Smith and 
his immediate followers did indeed ‘demand ’ it, as itself a good thing in 
the interests of production. Later economists have sometimes been more 
cautious and have “ demanded ’ it, but only as a postulate of their deductive 
reasonings, without committing themselves to an opinion as to its own 
merits. To assume its merits, without sufficient regard to contemporary 
conditions, and to base the establishment of a widespread governmental 
organisation upon this one ‘ demand,’ is likely to lead to some disappoint- 
ment with the results—as has been in the case with the British Labour 
Exchanges. 
When a long-established industry in England has been seriously damaged 
—as has, of course, occurred again and again—by changes in foreign tariffs, 
it has, I think, seldom happened that it has entirely disappeared. It 
may permanently contract into narrower dimensions, and in the next 
generation its place in a particular town may be taken by another and newer 
industry. In this case its disappearance will have been attended by an 
amount of suffering and, what is worse, of demoralisation which ‘ friction ’ 
hardly indicates. Or in another ten years it may have obtained new 
markets in other lands, and its output may be as large as ever. In 
this case we shall be told what an admirable thing is freedom in stimulating 
the enterprise of manufacturers and compelling them to improve their 
methods. That it sometimes does both, I do not dream of denying. But 
the deterioration of character which does so easily beset workpeople during 
protracted periods of unemployment or under-employment is at least as 
important a fact as the blessings of the subsequent rebound. 
And there is this to be added that, just as the old doctrine of the national 
capital exaggerated its fluidity within a country when already invested in 
plant, and minimised its fluidity as between countries when newly created, 
so the doctrine of the national labour-force overestimated its transferability 
88 Methods of Compiling Statistics of Unemployment. Intern. Labour Office : 
Studies and Reports, Series C. Unemployment No. 7. Geneva, 1922. See pp. 9, 
10, 11, 16. 
) Beveridge, Unemployment, p. 216. 
