Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T07:26:04.725Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Labour Exchanges and the Labour Reserve in Turn of the Century Social Reform*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Malcolm Mansfield
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article attempts to describe a major debate in turn of the century social reform through a close reading of the published works of Charles Booth, J.A. Hobson, William Beveridge, A.C. Pigou and others. My aim is to reconstruct the emergence and elaboration of a theory of labour market disorganisation, understood as the absence of effective norms governing employment relationships in urban labour markets subject to chronic over-supply. In so doing I shall take issue with a tendency in the historiography of social policy to fragment this debate into the development of two distinct conceptual frameworks corresponding to the social problems of poverty and unemployment more or less as we know them today.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1992 , pp. 435 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Alden, P. (1905), The Unemployed. A National Question, P.S. King and Son, London.Google Scholar
Barnett, S. (1893), ‘Poor law reform’, Contemporary Review, 63:3, 322–34.Google Scholar
Barns, J. (1893), ‘The unemployed’, Fabian Tract No.47, Fabian Society, London.Google Scholar
Beveridge, W.H. (1906), ‘The problem of the unemployed’, Sociological Society Sociological Papers, 3:1, 32–41.Google Scholar
Beveridge, W.H. (1908a), ‘The Unemployed Workmen Act of 1906–7’, The Sociological Review, 79–83.Google Scholar
Bevertdge, W.H. (1908b), ‘Unemployment and its cure—the first step’, The Contemporary Review, 93:4, 385–98.Google Scholar
Beveridge, W.H. (1909), Unemployment. A Problem of Industry, Longmans Green & Co, London (republished in 1930).Google Scholar
Beveridge, W.H. and Maynard, H.R. (1904), ‘The unemployed—lessons of the Mansion House Fund’, The Contemporary Review, 136:5, 629–38.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1892), ‘Dock and wharf labour’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 55:4, 521–58.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1894), The Aged Poor in England and Wales, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1904a), Life and Labour of the People in London, Poverty Series (1889 edition), Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1904b), Life and Labour of the People in London, Poverty Series (1904 edition), Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Booth, C. (1903), Life and Labour of the People in London, Industry Series, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Bosanquet, H. (1910), ‘The historical basis of English Poor-Law policy’, The Economic Journal, 11:6, 182–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowley, A.L. (1895), ‘Changes in average wages (nominal and real in the United Kingdom between 1860 and 1891’, The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 58:2, 223–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowley, A.L. (1912), ‘Wages and the mobility of labour’, The Economic Journal, 22:3, 46–52.Google Scholar
Chasse, J.D. (1984), ‘Marshall, the human agent and economic growth: wants and activities revisited’, History of Political Economy, 16:3, 381–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dendy, H. (1893), ‘The industrial residuum’, The Economic Journal, 4:3, 600–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drage, G. (1894), The Unemployed, Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Freeden, M. (1978), The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garland, D. (1985), Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies, Gower, Aldershot.Google Scholar
Giffen, R. (1883), ‘The progress of the working classes in the last half century’, The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 46:3, 593–622.Google Scholar
Hancock, K.J. (1962), ‘The reduction of unemployment as a problem of public policy’, Economic History Review, 15:2, 328–43.Google Scholar
Harris, J. (1972), Unemployment and Politics. A Study in English Social Policy 1886–1914, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hennock, E.P. (1976), ‘Poverty and social theory in England’, Social History, 83:1, 67–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HMSO (1909), Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress, III, Being the Minority Report.Google Scholar
Hobson, J.A. (1895a), ‘The meaning and measure of “unemployment”’, Contemporary Review, 67:3, 415–32.Google Scholar
Hobson, J.A. (1895b), ‘The economic cause of unemployment’, Contemporary Review, 67:5, 744–60.Google Scholar
Hobson, J.A. (1896a), ‘Is poverty diminishing?’, The Contemporary Review, 54:4, 484–99.Google Scholar
Hobson, J.A. (1891), Problems of Poverty. An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor, Kelley, New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Hobson, J.A. (1896b), ‘The social philosophy of charity organisation’, The Contemporary Review, 70:11, 710–27.Google Scholar
Jevons, W.S. (1869), ‘Inaugural address as President of the Manchester Statistical Society’, in Methods of Social Reform (1883), republished by Kelley, New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Kadish, A. (1982), The Oxford Economists in the late Nineteenth Century, Clarendon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Leeson, R. (1980), Travelling Brothers. The Six Centuries' Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism, Granada, London.Google Scholar
Smith, H. Llewellyn (1910), ‘Economic security and unemployment insurance’, The Economic Journal, 20:12, 513–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loch, C.S. (1895), ‘Manufacturing a new pauperism’, Nineteenth Century, 37: 4.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. (1883), ‘Three lectures on progress and poverty’, reprinted in The Journal of Law and Economics, 12:1, 697–708.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. (1885), ‘How far do remedial causes influence prejudicially (a) the continuity of employment, (b) the rates of wages?’, The Report of Proceedings and Papers to the Industrial Remuneration Conference, Kelley, New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. (1890), Principles of Economics, Macmillan, London (1961).Google Scholar
McBriar, A.M. (1987), An Edwardian Mixed Doubles. The Bosanquets versus the Webbs, A Study in British Social Policy 1890–1929, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Phillips, G. and Whiteside, N. (1985), Casual Labour. The Unemployment Question in the Port Transport Industry 1880–1970, Clarendon, Oxford.Google Scholar
Pigou, A.C. (1913), Unemployment, Williams and Norgate, London.Google Scholar
Shaw, C. (1987), ‘Eliminating the yahoo. Eugenics, social darwinism and five Fabians’, The History of Political Thought, 8:3, 521–44.Google Scholar
Spicker, P. (1990), ‘Charles Booth: the examination of poverty’, Social Policy and Administration, 24:1, 21–38.Google Scholar
Jones, G. Stedman (1976), ‘Outcast London. A study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society’, Peregrine, London.Google Scholar
, S. and Webb, B. (1897), Industrial Democracy, Longmans, Green and Co., London.Google Scholar
Whiteside, N. (1991), Bad Times. Unemployment in British Social and Political History, Faber and Faber, London.Google Scholar
Williams, K. (1981), From Pauperism to Poverty, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Wood, G.H. (1899), ‘Some statistics relating to working class progress since I860’, The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 112:4, 639–66.Google Scholar