Current Literature THE NEW UNEMPLOYMENT ACT AFFECTING as it does
some 34,000,000 people, the new Unemployment Act is a measure of which every person calling himself well-informed ought to have a good working knowledge. Mr. Ronald Davison, who has written at length and with authority in the past on unemployment, writes here with studied conciseness. His booklet (The New Unemployment Act Popularly Explained, Longmans, 9d.) compresses the essentials of the new Act into no more than 32 pages. This is precisely what is needed, and students of public affairs, distracted by the confusion arising from the fact that since the Unemployment Act of 1920 there have been on an average two amending Acts a year, can assume sufficient per- manence in the present measure to make it worth mastering. Mr. Davison, even though writing for popular consumption, is a little unnecessarily colloquial here and there, and the frequent use of exclamation marks suggests other emotions than those naturally inspired by sober exposition. But the exposition is clear and accurate, though the statement that all manual and non-manual employment under £5 a week is insurable except domestic service and work on the land might have been modified by a reference to the special position of railwaymen. It was worth pointing out, as Mr. Davison does, that the increases in benefit under the new Act represent an increased expenditure of some 110,000,000 a year on retail goods—which, m turn, will help to reduce unemployment.
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