y proved to be worse for
the patient than the disease itself. I fear that if we were given full
power to-morrow to deal with the unemployed all over England, we
should find ourselves hard put to it how to solve the problem."[375]
At the last Conference (1907) of the Social-Democratic Federation the
resolution was moved, "That this Conference reasserts its statement
that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and
capital."[376]

The emphatic statements contained in the foregoing declarations that
unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital are
absurd. If the private ownership of land and capital were the cause of
unemployment, unemployment should be almost equally great in all
civilised countries, because in all civilised countries land and
capital are in private hands. Whilst in Great Britain unemployment is
a fearful and permanent evil, it has been practically unknown during a
long time in Germany, where there has been for many years so great a
scarcity of labour that immigration is greater than emigration.[377]
Whilst in capitalist Great Britain employment is so bad that from
200,000 to 300,000 people have to emigrate every year, employment in
capitalist Germany has been excellent, and in the capitalist United
States it has been so good that they have absorbed during a number of
years almost 1,000,000 immigrants per year. These facts prove that
private ownership of land and capital and over-production have nothing
to do with unemployment, which is, as a rule, due not to
over-production but to ill-balanced production, as has been proved on
page 70 of this book. In the case of a country such as Great Britain,
unemployment is due principally to the insufficiency and insecurity of
her markets for her manufactured goods and to the decay of her
agriculture.

The various Socialist organisations have so constantly preached the
doctrine that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and
capital that the Trade Unions have at last come to believe it. Owing
to Socialist inspiration, the Trade Union Congresses have passed
resolutions in favour of the nationalisation of land and of the other
means of production at most of the meetings since 1888, and a
Socialist weekly has been able to assert that "Every member of the
Socialist Labour Party, either by Trade Union Congresses or by
Independent Labour Party programme, is committed to the
nationalisation of land and the instruments of pr