Now this is precisely analogous to the problem of the allocation of our resources for the purpose of peace. Notwithstanding all the wastes and maladjustments of the economic system, the use of resources to produce one commodity _does_ in general curtail the production of others. The mere launching of a new business enterprise does no more than the sending of an army to Salonika, to eliminate waste in the remainder of the economic organism. Unemployment, broadly speaking, is a function not of the magnitude of the normal demand for labor (which affects rather the wage-level), but of fluctuations in the demand for labor; fluctuations from one day to another as at the docks, from one season to another as in the building trades, above all from one period of years to another as in the cycles of general trade boom and depression. Nothing will diminish unemployment which does not serve to diminish these fluctuations. A new business will not, as a rule, have any such effect. If it is launched during a trade depression (a most unusual proceeding), it may temporarily absorb unemployed labor and idle materials. But when the next boom comes, it will be using, though presumably to greater advantage, labor and materials which, but for it, would have been employed for other purposes. Meanwhile the causes making for unemployment will be unaffected. Miscalculations will still be made, the building trades will still become slack in the winter, the casual methods of engaging dock laborers will still continue, trade cycles will still recur, while beneath them, and concealed by them, some industries will expand and others will decay. Thus, like the armies at Salonika, the new business would in effect divert resources from elsewhere. This truth needs to be firmly grasped in mind. It is this that makes it in general unsound policy to subsidize industries, either directly or indirectly, by means of a protective tariff. It is this, indeed, that supplies the answer to half the economic fallacies that are always current.