The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp.

  • Josiah Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp
Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    53/192 page 41
    Industrial Disequilirriuji So much for the effect of cliange of any kind upon emjiloyinent. Now let ns narrow this to scientilic 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 ex]iired 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, diff’erential growth in popula¬ tion, changing duties and tariff’s, the psychological booms and depressions of trade through monetary and other causes, all disturb equilibrium, and, there¬ fore, 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 percent¬ age 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 Great Britain there may well be a million unemployed in what we should call good times—it is part of the price we ])ay for the high standard of life secured by those who retain employment. For a level of real wage may be high enough to prevent everyone 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 unemployalile D
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