F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 119 
Unemployment arises not from insufficient demand for the products 
of industry as a whole, but from the number of persons offering to work in 
particular branches of industry being in excess of the number admissible, 
having regard to the conditions and wages which are required to satisfy 
both the would-be workers who are unemployed and the persons already 
in employment. If the unemployed will not take what employers would 
offer them, the case is simple, and it is only a little more complicated if 
they are willing to take, and the employers are willing to give, something 
less than what is paid to the persons already employed; but the two parties 
are prevented from coming to terms on that basis by the fact that those 
already employed would go out on strike if the additional contingent was 
accepted at a lower rate than that which they themselves are receiving. 
Now one of the commonest causes of such a situation is a falling off of 
demand for the products of a particular branch of industry. The fact that 
the demand for any product, let us say coal, for example, falls off, is a good 
reason for fewer persons being employed in that branch of industry and 
more in other branches. If the diminution of demand is very gradual, the 
necessary reduction in personnel can be effected by a cessation of recruiting. 
Many a branch of industry has gradually wilted away in this manner 
without much inconvenience or hardship to anyone. But if the 
diminution is more sudden, unemployment results owing to the natural 
reluctance of persons skilled, or at any rate experienced, in the particular 
branch of industry to leave it and try for employment in some other. 
The thoughtless outsider is apt to say that both the unemployed and 
those who are still employed in the branch should accept lower wages, 
and so by cheapening the product, extend the demand for it. As a 
temporary palliative this may sometimes be reasonable, but it is evidently 
never the best final solution of the difficulty. It is not reasonable that a 
trade should be continuously worse paid than others merely because the 
demand for its products was once bigger than it has become. What the 
_ diminution of demand calls for is a redistribution of labour force, fewer 
persons being allotted to the branch of industry of which the products 
are less in demand, and more persons to the other branches. 
But when population is increasing, absolute diminutions of demand 
are likely to be somewhat fewer, and somewhat less acute when they do 
_ occur, than when population is stationary. If, for example, by the intro- 
_ duction of oil, or more economical consumption, the average person’s 
demand for coal is reduced by one-tenth, in a stationary population the 
total demand for coal would be reduced by one-tenth ; but if the popula- 
tion in the same time increased 12 per cent., the total demand would be 
not reduced but slightly increased, and there would be no employment 
- difficulty. 
We ought therefore not to imagine that a stationary or declining 
population will rid us of the trouble of unemployment. It will provide 
more rather than less reason for promoting mobility of labour in place and 
occupation, and we shall have to take more care, rather than less, than at 
present to secure that arrangements which seem superficially desirable 
do not hinder that mobility. 
It is inevitable, I suppose, that the question will be asked, whether 
cessation of the growth of population is to be regarded as a good or an 
