Consequently, it cannot be said that the German savings banks deposits are more than three times as large, and that they increase from eight to twenty-five times as fast, as the British savings banks deposits, because the interest paid is higher in Germany than in Great Britain.

I am also not of opinion that the huge amount and the rapid accumulation of deposits in the German savings banks, as compared with the small amount and the slow growth of deposits in the British savings banks deposits, is chiefly due to the fact that Germans are more thrifty than Englishmen. The greater thrift of the Germans is largely off-set by other influences which diminish German, but not British, savings. The German workers have, on an average, a larger number of children, and therefore larger expenses, than have Englishmen of the same class, and education is not gratuitous in Germany, as it is in this country. Besides, the German children are longer at school than British children, they go to work later in life, and they have therefore to be maintained during a longer period by their parents than English children. Lastly, military service is compulsory and universal in Germany, and the pay of the soldier is so low that it is usually supplemented by small sums which the parents send regularly to their sons who are serving. All these circumstances, and various others which I might enumerate, tend to entrench upon German savings.

The comparative tables given in the foregoing pages as to unemployment among German and British trade unionists, as to emigration from Germany and Great Britain, and as to British and German savings banks deposits, corroborate and confirm each other. All these tables point unmistakably to the fact that employment is, as a rule, very considerably better in Germany than in Great Britain, and that, consequently, unemployment is less prevalent in the former than in the latter country. They point to the fact that, in consequence of better employment, the great mass of the working population is considerably better off in Germany than in Great Britain. The greater prosperity of the German working masses is eloquently proclaimed by the German savings banks statistics.

The fact that the members of certain British trade unions receive higher nominal wages than the members in the corresponding German trade unions does not contradict the foregoing conclusions. In Great Britain, the trade unions are almost as old as are the manufacturing industries themselves. In Germany, the trade unions are of yesterday. The German trade unions have not yet succeeded in conquering for themselves a privileged position, and "standard union wages" are practically unknown

in Germany. Although nominal trade union wages in Great Britain are in many instances higher than are the corresponding. trade union wages in Germany, it cannot be concluded therefrom that general wages are higher in Great Britain than in Germany. On the contrary, the general level of wages is probably as high in Germany as in Great Britain, and is very likely higher in that country than over here. The migration of German industries to England is not only due to the new Patents Act, but also to the fact that German manufacturers have discovered, as the British Consul at Frankfort pointed out in his last report, that general wages are lower in Great Britain than they are in Germany. The comparisons of German and British trade union wages, which have repeatedly been made by the British Board of Trade, err very seriously in two respects. In the first place, no allowance is made, as a rule, for the fact that very heavy insurance premiums have been deducted from the German wages previous to payment. Therefore German wages, as usually stated, appear considerably smaller than they are in reality. In the second place, no allowance is made as a rule for the fact that unemployment is much greater in Great Britain than in Germany. Hence, British wages appear substantially larger than they are in reality.

All the foregoing facts and figures point unmistakably in the same direction. They allow us to conclude that unemployment is usually very small in Germany, as compared with this country. That conclusion is amply confirmed by the complaints about scarcity of workers which may be found in numerous reports of the German Chambers of Commerce and of the German Chambers of Agriculture, as well as in the reports of many manufacturing and mining enterprises of Germany. These complaints have found an echo in the reports of many British Consuls, especially of the Consuls in Berlin, Hamburg, Dantzig, and Frankfort.

At the time of the last General Election in Germany, on the 15th of January, 1907, the Social Democratic Party issued an election manifesto which stated: "We have in Germany not too large, but too small, a number of workers. This may be seen from the fact that every year foreign workers are imported into Germany by the hundred thousand." That statement was by no means an exaggerated one. In 1906, Germany imported no fewer than 600,000 workers from abroad, of whom 240,000 were occupied in agriculture, and 360,000 in the manufacturing and mining industries. However, that huge immigration was apparently quite insufficient, for the Chamber of Commerce at Mannheim sent to the Government a petition which prayed that foreign workers should be allowed to be imported into Germany more

freely, so as to relieve the great scarcity of labour. That interesting document stated: "A scarcity of male and female workers has prevailed in our district during some considerable time, as reference to the yearly reports of this Chamber for 1904, 1905, and 1906 shows. Since several years the scarcity of workers is constantly increasing. This scarcity has, in the course of this year, grown to such an extent that various industries have been very seriously hampered in their operations, and have suffered considerable loss and damage. Experience has shown that that scarcity of workers cannot be remedied by offering higher wages. The workers know that labour is scarce. An increase in wages does not increase the output. On the contrary, employers are seriously complaining that their workers produce less and less, knowing that they are the masters of the situation."

The petition from which the foregoing extract is taken-many similar statements are on record-is dated the 13th of November, 1907, a time when employment was very bad in Great Britain, when our trade unions reported that 5 per cent. of their members were unemployed, when the British papers were as full with information about unemployment and consequent distress as they are at present, and when relief works for the unemployed were demanded all over the country. Commenting on the petition of which an extract has been given, the Mannheim Chamber of Commerce stated in its last report :-"The causes of the permanent scarcity of workers are sufficiently known. The continuous growth of our industries and trade requires a large additional supply of workers, a supply which is not forthcoming through the natural increase of our population."

In view of the fact that the natural increase of the German population comes to the enormous figure of 910,000 a year, whilst the British population has a natural increase of only 380,000 a year, and is nevertheless suffering constantly from widespread unemployment, and consequent emigration, the foregoing complaint that the natural increase of the German population is insufficient is very remarkable.

The state of employment in Germany may be measured to some extent by the sick fund figures, which are published every month, and which show how many workers are insured against disease with the State Insurance Societies. By comparing the number of insured workers during the present and the previous year, and by allowing for the natural increase of workers, Richard Calwer, a prominent German statistician, has calculated in the Wirtschaftliche Korrespondenz that at present 380,000 workers, out of a total of about 14,000,000 wage-earners, are unemployed in Germany. If his careful calculations, which have been endorsed

by the German Press and the German Parliament, are correct, it would follow that 27 of the German workers are at present unemployed. Reference to the foregoing pages shows that unemployment among German trade unionists comes also to 27 per cent. Apparently unemployment in Germany is equally great among union and non-union workers. In this country it is usually assumed that the percentage of unemployed among our unorganised workers is considerably higher than it is among our trade unionists, the aristocrats of British labour. However, assuming that unemployment among our non-union workers is no higher than among our trade unionists, it would follow that at present unemployment in Germany is trifling if compared with unemployment in Great Britain. Whilst unemployment among our trade unionists came to 89 per cent. in August, and to 9'4 per cent. in September of this year, it came to only 27 per cent. among all the German workers. Assuming, in opposition to the opinion which is generally held by experts, that unemployment is at present no greater among our non-union workers than it is among unionists, it would appear that unemployment in this country compares with unemployment in Germany approximately as 35 and 10; that for every 10 unemployed workers in Germany there are 35 unemployed workers in Great Britain. These figures make no allowance for the "irreducible minimum" of unemployment already referred to. Everyone acquainted with labour statistics must admit that this estimate is a very moderate one. Let us now compare unemployment in Great Britain with unemployment in the United States.

Various Cabinet ministers, and among them the Prime Minister himself, have lately repeatedly asserted in Parliament and elsewhere that unemployment is considerably greater in the United States than in Great Britain, and they have in several instances quoted very high percentages relating to unemployment in America during the present and during past years. In America no national statistics of unemployment, comparable with those available for Great Britain and Germany, are published, but some of the individual States of the Union, especially New York and Massachusetts, issue regularly statistics of unemployment among the members of certain trade unions within their territories. Acquaintance with the New York State unemployment statistics shows that the Ministerial statements, according to which unemployment is usually far greater in the United States than in Great Britain, were based upon the very fragmentary statistics of unemployment published by the Department of Labor of the State of New York. Let us now compare the

unemployment statistics of New York State with the unemployment statistics relating to Great Britain.

UNEMPLOY-
MENT IN
GREAT
BRITAIN.
Average

Idle on the last day
of March

per year

UNEMPLOYMENT IN NEW YORK STATE.

Idle continuously for 3 months, January,

February, March

The foregoing table shows that unemployment among trade unionists is habitually from two to six times as large in New York as it is in Great Britain. Now the question arises: Can we conclude from these figures that, as a writer on economic subjects recently put it, "In America from 10 to 30 per cent. of the workers are habitually unemployed even in the best years"?

In the United States there are almost 20,000,000 wage-earners. The foregoing statistics relate only to from 150,000 to 400,000 workers, or to from 1 to 2 per cent. of the whole wage-earning population. This fact alone shows that the New York statistics of unemployment among trade unionists cannot be safely used as a reliable index to the state of employment in the United States. Besides, the State of New York occupies an altogether exceptional position in the United States. In the first place, about 80 per cent. of the foreign immigrants who go to the United States land in New York harbour, and a large number of these remain in New York State, where they often supplant native workers. Hence, trade union employment is not very steady in New York. In the words of the British Consul in New York, "When there is such an immense monthly flow of new men, the unions are to a great extent paralysed." Thus, New York occupies an altogether exceptional position. New York stands approximately in the same relation to the other American States in which the East-end of London stands to the rest of Great Britain, and it is as absurd to estimate the number of unemployed