Abstract
A PAMPHLET entitled “Unemployment: Its Realities and Problems” issued by the Engineering and Allied Employers' National Federation, Broadway House, Tothill Street, London, S.W.I, contains the result of an inquiry conducted among members of the Federation into the general subject of unemployment and particularly the proposal to establish a working week of forty hours. The pamphlet expresses the belief that the signs are that our civilisation still possesses the urge and impulse to recover from its latest shock and resume its upward march. Stress is laid upon the moral effect of confidence in recovery and part of the world's sufferings are still attributed to the six years' arrested growth caused by the late War. The importance of a growing appreciation of the real causes underlying the present depression is recognised as in itself one of the best hopes of amelioration. There is no royal road to the cure for unemployment and the complexity of the factors involved and particularly the psychological effects make progress inevitably slow and difficult. While the part which international co-operation must play is admitted, sufficient emphasis is scarcely laid on this fact and the pamphlet might easily give the impression that national effort alone is sufficient. Particular attention is directed to the increase in total employment which has accompanied the growth of unemployment and it is considered that the unemployment crisis is not the result of mechanisation, a conclusion which was discussed in the leading article in NATURE of July 29, p. 149. It is also concluded that displacement of male by female labour is not true of industry as a whole, but the arguments presented against the adoption of the 40-hour week are less convincing and make partisan reading. The whole question is discussed too much apart from the fundamental problems of. distribution and social economics to which reference was made in our leading article.
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Mechanisation and Unemployment. Nature 132, 197–198 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132197d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132197d0