ABSTRACT
In approaching the unemployment problem, many contemporaries in the German society expressed serious doubts about the efficacy of individual effort. Although there were important differences, employers and would-be reformers shared a common outlook on certain issues related to work shortages. Weighing the relative advantages of savings as opposed to insurance, the next passage is revealing in terms of contemporary attitudes toward alternate forms of unemployment relief. To avoid competition with employers, compensation for being out of work was never to exceed the lowest wages received for labor. This chapter argues that the state should intervene on the unemployment issue only where self-help failed to protect a majority of individuals against the hardships imposed by a capitalist economy. While insurance or other temporary support would help in some instances, more permanent remedies involving the long-term transfer of personnel were necessary to combat structural changes which led to the decline of entire occupations or the closing of specific firms.
