Aspects' bf Unemployment

Seasonal Variations in Employment. By C. T. Saunders. (Longmans. 15s.) The State and the Standard or Living. By Gertrude Williams. (P. S. King. 9s.) Justice in a Depressed Area. A Critical Study. By Charlei Muir. With a Foreword by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Weildon, D.D. (Allen and Unwin. 6s.) . The Challenge of Leisure. Edited by William , Boyd. With an Introduction by R. H. Tawney. (New Education Fellow. ship. 5s.) HERE are four books of widely varying character, but each of them dealing with an important aspect of what is undoubtedly the central ecqnomic and social problem of our age-7-unemployment.

... Mr. Saunders tackles a specific and limited economic problem—that of seasonal fluctuations. He gives a statis-

tical analysis of these for every industry and endeavours to assess the relative importance of seasonal movement in unemployment as a whole. Particularly valuable are his detailed investigations of certain representative trades.

notably the motor, clothing and building industries, as well as branches of agriculture, with a .view . to disentangling different factors, such as climate, fashion and so on. How are you to handle the employment problem of a Manchester pantie factory whose permanent staff is 30, whose average employment is 60 and whose maximum employment is 75 Mr. Saunders makes some interesting suggestions, but It is

clear that there is no fundamental cure within ,any. economic system based on consumers' demand.

The State and the. Standard of Living is a major work of real importance. Miss Williams has given us a compre- hensive history of State action in the social . field from the late. nineteenth centurywhen as a result of the breakdown of Benthamism and the efforts of the Fabians, the Trade :Unions and. the religious Socialists of the. Keir,.Hardie_ type the nation began to wake up to the condition, of the working .classes—to the latest, or all but latest, efforts of the Unem- ployment Assistance Board. As Miss Williams shows, stern individualism (for others). died hard. She quotes two passages which deserve reproduction : • " I am inclined, however, to think (sa:d J. St. Lee Strachey of The Spectator) that a far more important factor than industrial disorganisation is the moral disorganisation caused by the belief that unemployment is not a man's fault, but his misfortune, and by the failure to recognise that a man may •have less evil done to him by experiencing for a time tho actual pinch of want than by being pauperised,at the hands of the State ' To which argument, and others of its kidney, Mr. Rowntree replied in The Poverty Line, a pamphlet printed in 1903, as

follows : •

" If the men and women in this class (of unemployed) possessed, as a whole, extraordinary energy and perseverance, they might perhaps, notwithstanding .physical feebleness, and a depressing

environment, raise themselves to a higher level ; but it is idle to expect from them as a class, virtues and powers far in excess of those characterising any other section of the community."

Mr. Muir throws considerable doubt on the comfortable conviction that, in Great Britain, all is for the best in the best of possible legal worlds. Confidence in the impartial administration of justice lies at the root of democracy, or for that matter of civilisation itself, and Justice in a Depressed Area contains criticisms which are at any rate deserving of serious consideration. It is clear that on the depressed North-East coast, where the author is a practising barrister, the working classes feel the Courts—whether magistrates, County, or Assize—to be part of a rather inhuman machine which makes little effort to understand or cope with their problems.

The Challenge of Leisure goes straight to the heart of the unemployment problem. The machine has made increasing leisure for all possible. What are we going to do with it ?

The book is really the report of the British Regional Con- ference of the " New Education Fellowship," held at St. Andrews in 1935, under the presidency of Dr. A. D. Lindsay. Contributions from many of the leading figures in adult and juvenile education are here reprinted.

There is much valuable matter, much original and stimu- lating thought. Yet one somehow gets the impression that the key to the whole has not yet been discovered.

What is that key ? Is not the basic problem of all human activity, and above all of work which depends so much on leadership as adult education and social work generally—the quality of those engaged in it.

If unemployment is the central economic and social problem of our age, the problem of educating democracy is the central political problem. In an intelligently organised democracy social work and adult education (which are much the same thing) should claim the finest talents, the most daemonic energy, which the community can produce. It should be possible, and reasonable, for first-class men and women to take them up as a career.

During the last few months, the reviewer has had some practical experience of social work. He had hoped to make propaganda for it among the best young men and women of the Universities and the public and secondary schools. He thought—rightly—that there was no more inspiring or satis- fying job than that of leading, educating and helping others. But it is not easy to ask good men and women to enter a profession where the standards of payment and treatment are so completely different from those to be found in other walks of life. No wonder that he was informed by one of the leading figures in social work that it was extraordinarily difficult to get men to fill the jobs.

Here is a subject worth writing about, a book crying to be written. May it not be long before the writer has the pleasure of reviewing it I H. POWYS GREENWOOD.