ABSTRACT
“Unemployment” is perhaps the most illusive term which confronts the student of modern industrial society. This illusiveness exposes the subject to grave abuses. Well-meaning but somewhat hasty social reformers stretch the term and bloat it out to gigantic proportions; professional economists and statisticians, provoked by this unwarranted exaggeration, are tempted to a corresponding excess of extenuation, and are almost driven to deny the reality of any “unemployed” question, over and above that of the mere temporary leakages and displacements due to the character of certain trades, and to the changes of industrial methods.
