Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-z8dg2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-06T08:23:13.153Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Discovery of Unemployment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

William Walters
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Ottawa
Get access

Summary

Society is built up on labour; it lays upon its members responsibilities which in the vast majority of cases can be met only from the reward of labour … its ideal unit is the household of man, wife and children maintained by the earnings of the first alone. The household should have at all times sufficient room and air according to its size – but how, if the income is too irregular always to pay the rent? The children, till they themselves can work, should be supported by the parents – but how unless the father has employment? The wife, so long at least as she is bearing and bringing up children, should have no other task – but how if the husband's earnings fail and she has to go out to work? Everywhere the same difficulty occurs. Reasonable security of employment for the breadwinner is the basis of all private duties and all sound action.

Historians are in general agreement that the term ‘unemployment’ only entered into official and popular usage in the last decade or so of the nineteenth century. Yet the social and political question of worklessness, and of destitution connected with want of employment, is obviously much older. Almost three centuries ago, Daniel Defoe, in a statement which still resonates today, expressed a condemnatory view of those who attributed their misfortune to an inability to find employment: ‘The reason why so many pretend to want work is that they can live so well with the pretense … [that] they would be mad to leave it and work in earnest.’

Type
Chapter
Information
Unemployment and Government
Genealogies of the Social
, pp. 12 - 35
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×