ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the task that can be better performed for the cyclically unemployed than for the casualities of any of the other types of unemployment. In the field much of the pioneering work was again undertaken by Charles Booth. In his survey of East London in the late 1880s, he had strongly underlined the paramountcy of economic forces in keeping families at, the poverty line. This development in its turn implied the formulation of a more sophisticated methodology to grapple with many of the basic questions which recurrent, or chronic, unemployment and underemployment posed for politicians, civil servants and social scientists. In some places this might mean that a disproportionate element of the casual labour force lived in or near the city centre which, despite the accelerating pace of urban renewal and reconstruction after 1870, still continued to be a significant focal point for the irregularly employed.
