(_b_) This insecurity is accentuated by the fact that the maintenance of profits frequently require a check upon productivity in order to tighten the market by reducing the supply of commodities. It is estimated that in America this interference with production has kept productivity down anywhere between twenty-five and fifty per cent. below its possible maximum. This obstruction is effected by such devices as the diminution of working hours, dismissal of workmen, and periodic stoppages of work. (_c_) A further element of insecurity is to be found in the circumstance that labour is itself treated as a commodity, subject to market fluctuations, its price governed by the relation of supply to demand, like any other commodity. In order to prevent an undue rise in the price of labour, the industrial system has evolved a _reserve of labour_, commonly called unemployment. In normal times, there is in every trade a chronic margin—varying in amount—of unemployed men; and no man knows when his turn may come to fall into the reserve. It naturally happens that the less efficient man goes first—the man least equipped to face the demoralising effects of unemployment. The result is that he degenerates into an unemployable and swells the volume of the human driftwood of our social order. (_d_) Insecurity arises also from the unquestioned and unchallenged authority of the owners or representatives of the invested capital, against whose verdicts there is no appeal. The worker is at the absolute mercy of the master or the foreman; and he can usually find work only at the sacrifice of his freedom. Should he display any signs of restiveness and be dismissed, the growth of Trusts and Employers’ Associations has made it possible to deny him employment within the area over which such bodies exercise control.