12 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



their area. The very social machinery which is set up to facilitate 

 change or to soften dislocation, aggravates the evil. The first two 

 difficulties are unalterable. This third difficulty is a subject for 

 scientific examination. 



So much for the effect of change of any kind upon employment. 

 Now let us narrow this to scientific changes. At any given moment 

 the impact of science is always causing some unemployment, but at 

 that same time the constructive additional employment following upon 

 past expired impacts is being enjoyed. But it is easy to exaggerate 

 the amount of the balance of net technological unemployment. 

 For industrial disequilibrium arises in many ways, having nothing 

 whatever to do with science. Changes of fashion, exhaustion of 

 resources, differential growth in population, changing customs and 

 tariffs, the psychological booms and depressions of trade through 

 monetary and other causes, all disturb equilibrium, and, therefore, 

 contract and expand employment in particular places. Our analytical 

 knowledge of unemployment is bringing home the fact that, like 

 capital accumulation, it is the result of many forces. A recent 

 official report indicated that a quite unexpected amount or percentage 

 of unemployment would be present even in boom times. We know 

 already that there may be a shortage of required labour in a district 

 where there is an 8 or 10 per cent, figure of unemployment. So, in 

 this country there may well be a million unemployed in what we 

 should call good times — it is part of the price we pay for the high 

 standard of life secured by those who retain employment. For a 

 level of real wage may be high enough to prevent every one being 

 employable at that wage — though that is by no means the whole 

 economic story of unemployment. Of this number probably 

 200,000 would be practically unemployable on any ordinary basis — 

 the ' hard core ' as it is called. Perhaps seven or eight hundred 

 thousand from the perpetual body, changing incessantly as to its unit 

 composition, and consisting of workers undergoing transition from 

 job to job, from place* to place, from industry to industry, with 

 seasonal occupations — the elements of ' frictional ' unemployment 

 through different causes. Out of this number, I should hazard that 

 not more than 250,000 would be unemployed through the particular 

 disturbing element of net scientific innovation. This is the maximum 

 charge that should be laid at the door of science, except in special 

 times, such as after a war, when the ordinary application of new 

 scientific ideas day by day has been delayed, and all the postponed 

 changes tend to come with a rush. At any given moment, of course, 

 the technological unemployment that could be computed from the 

 potentiality of new processes over displaced ones, appears to be much 

 greater. But such figures are gross, and from them must be deducted 

 all recent employment in producing new things or larger production 



