Reducing cyclical unemployment and its effects.

Proposed remedies for "Unemployment."In discussing methods of dealing with "the unemployed," who represent an "over-supply" of labour at a given time, it is often found convenient to distinguish the temporary "unemployment" due to fluctuations rising from the nature of certain trades, and the permanent unemployment or half employment of large numbers of the least efficient town workers.

At the end of three months from the beginning of the war the condition of men's employment was about normal; but women were suffering from excessive unemployment, whilst short time was still common in many industries in which women are largely employed.

[Footnote 2: The scheme applies only to unions suffering from abnormal unemployment.

The need is not merely to mitigate the severity of the brief period of crisis, but also to smooth out the curve of the business cycle so as to reduce periodic unemployment, the lottery element in profits, and the number of unmerited failures in business.

Proposed remedies for "Unemployment."In discussing methods of dealing with "the unemployed," who represent an "over-supply" of labour at a given time, it is often found convenient to distinguish the temporary "unemployment" due to fluctuations rising from the nature of certain trades, and the permanent unemployment or half employment of large numbers of the least efficient town workers.

Beyond a certain point, such a policy must result in general unemployment; and, if pushed sufficiently far, in unemployment so extensive that it would continue even in periods of active trade.

Thus the actual unemployment among men is, except in (certain) black patches, only sporadic and scarcely more than we are accustomed to.