BY H.D.  HENDERSON

M.A.; Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge; Lecturer in Economics; Secretary to the Cotton Control Board from 1917-1919.

Mr. Henderson said:—­From one point of view the existence of an unemployment problem is an enigma and a paradox.  In a world, where even before the war the standard of living that prevailed among the mass of the people was only what it was, even in those countries which we termed wealthy, it seems at first sight an utterly astonishing anomaly that at frequent intervals large numbers of competent and industrious work-people should find no work to do.  The irony of the situation cannot be more tersely expressed than in the words, which a man is supposed to have uttered as he watched a procession of unemployed men:  “No work to do.  Set them to rebuild their own houses.”

But, if we reflect just a shade more deeply, nothing should surprise us less than unemployment.  We have more reason for surprise that it is usually upon so small a scale.  The economic system under which we live in the modern world is very peculiar and only our familiarity with it keeps us from perceiving how peculiar it is.  In one sense it is highly organised; in another sense it is not organised at all.  There is an elaborate differentiation of functions—­the “division of labour,” to give it its time-honoured name, under which innumerable men and women perform each small specialised tasks, which fit into one another with the complexity of a jig-saw puzzle, to form an integral whole.  Some men dig coal from the depths of the earth, others move that coal over land by rail and over the seas in ships, others are working in factories, at home and abroad, which consume that coal, or in shipyards which build the ships; and it is obvious, not to multiply examples further, that the numbers of men engaged on those various tasks must somehow be adjusted, in due proportions to one another.  It is no use, for instance, building more ships than are required to carry the stuff there is to carry.

Adjustment, co-ordination, must somehow be secured.  Well, how is it secured?  Who is it that ordains that, say, a million men shall work in the coal-mines, and 600,000 on the railways, and 200,000 in the shipyards, and so on?  Who apportions the nation’s labour power between the innumerable different occupations, so as to secure that there are not too many and not too few engaged in any one of them relatively to the others?  Is it the Prime Minister, or the Cabinet, or Parliament, or the Civil Service?  Is it the Trade Union Congress, or the Federation of British Industries, or does any one suppose that it is some hidden cabal of big business interests?  No, there is no co-ordinator.  There is no human brain or organisation responsible for fitting together this vast jig-saw puzzle; and, that being so, I say that what should really excite our wonder is the fact that that puzzle should somehow get fitted together, usually with so few gaps left unfilled and with so few pieces left unplaced.