1899 2.40 2.1
1900 2.85 2.3
1901 3.80 3.6
1902 4.60 8.3
1903 5.30 11.7

These figures make it quite evident that the permanent causes of
irregular employment, e.g., weather in the building and riverside
trades, season in the dressmaking and confectionery trades, and the
other factors of leakage and displacement which throw out of work from
time to time numbers of workers, are, taken in the aggregate,
responsible only for a small proportion of the unemployment in the
staple trades of the country.

The significance of such figures as these can scarcely be over-
estimated. Although it might fairly be urged that the lowest dip in
trade depression truly represented the injury inflicted on the
labouring-classes by trade fluctuations, we will omit the year 1886, and
take 1887 as a representative period of ordinary trade depression. The
figures quoted above are supported by Trade Union statistics, which show
that in that year among the strongest Trade Unions in the country,
consisting of the picked men in each trade, no less than 71 in every
1000, or over 7 per cent., were continuously out of work. That this was
due to their inability to get work, and not to their unwillingness to do
it, is placed beyond doubt by the fact that they were, during this
period of enforced idleness, supported by allowances paid by their
comrades. Indeed, the fact that in 1890 the mass of unemployed was
almost absorbed, disposes once for all of the allegation that the
unemployed in times of depression consist of idlers who do not choose to
work. Turning to the year 1887, there is every reason to believe that