for causing a slump in trade. The alternation of overtime and unemployment is supposed to be as natural as that of night and day. The workers have to bear the burdens of the system under which they live, and as they are not responsible for its control, nothing is done by way of a remedy.[1] Thus the chronic underpayment of the workers adds to our chaotic methods of production in intensifying periods of apparent over-production and trade depression.
Nor is it much better with the class above the workers. As unemployment comes inevitably upon the wage-earners, so bankruptcy comes inevitably upon the capitalist. During the ten years preceding 1909, there were in England and Wales 78,000 bankruptcies and deeds of arrangement, with a total estimated loss to creditors of £81,000,000. In 1909 there were 7,561 bankruptcies and deeds of arrangement, and the total loss to creditors so far as the Board of Trade returns show them, amounted to no less a sum than £5,086,131.
Although some enterprises that become bankrupt are of the nature of experiments that would have had to be made under any system, and others are purely fraudulent,
- ↑ Even here a beginning of new things has to be noted. The political organisation of labour brought this problem within the area of pressing political interests. The workers have to an extent become responsible for themselves, and consequently the Right to Work Bill has been discussed in parliament, and partly as a result of this a scheme of insurance against sickness and unemployment has been promised by the government.
