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Abstract
Between the world wars, unemployment spread throughout the industrialised world like a disease. In Bread and Work, Matt Perry places this global unemployment crisis in its proper international context. Focusing on Britain, Europe and the United States, he compares and contrasts popular attitudes and the government response toward unemployment.
Looking beyond statistics and economic cycles, Perry investigates the human impact of unemployment. He uncovers the experience of being jobless from the perspective of those who lived through it, their employers and their communities. He uses oral history, memoirs, literary accounts, and newspaper articles to reveal the reality of unemployment.
Perry argues that the scale of the crisis has been minimised by historians who have tended to emphasise that prolonged unemployment was the problem of the distressed fringe.
Finally, Perry argues that the lessons of the 1930s have direct relevance today since the structural problems of industrial capitalism remain inherent.
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | v | ||
| List of Tables | vii | ||
| Preface | ix | ||
| Glossary | xii | ||
| Introduction | 1 | ||
| 1 Unemployment: History and Perspectives | 10 | ||
| Unemployment and Industrial Capitalism | 10 | ||
| Unemployment and the Demise of the Poor Law | 13 | ||
| The Late and Contested Recognition of Unemployment | 17 | ||
| The Discovery of Unemployment | 19 | ||
| Unemployment in Britain between the Wars: Revisionism and its Critics | 23 | ||
| Sources of Controversy: Revisionism and Historical Methods | 28 | ||
| 2 Government, Employers and Unemployment | 37 | ||
| Concessions Born of Unrest, 1918 -22 | 38 | ||
| Reform and Retrenchment, 1922 -39 | 41 | ||
| Half-measures: Public Works, Labour Camps and Special Areas | 45 | ||
| Employers' Organisations, Bosses and Unemployment | 48 | ||
| Conclusion | 56 | ||
| 3 The Experience of Unemployment | 58 | ||
| The Representation of Unemployment | 59 | ||
| The Reality of Unemployment | 63 | ||
| Housing and Health | 69 | ||
| An Authoritarian Social Policy: The Administration of the Unemployed | 74 | ||
| The Unemployed Condition: Dole and Revolution? | 78 | ||
| Conclusion | 80 | ||
| 4 The Labour Party and Unemployment | 81 | ||
| Labour Party Thought and Unemployment | 82 | ||
| Dissenting Economic Views | 85 | ||
| 1924 - Labour's First Term | 86 | ||
| Labour's Second Term, 1929-31 | 90 | ||
| The Aftermath | 97 | ||
| 5 Unemployed Struggles | 103 | ||
| The National Unemployed Workers' Movement and its Major Battles | 104 | ||
| 1919-23 | 104 | ||
| 1931-36 | 106 | ||
| The Record of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement | 113 | ||
| 6 The Unemployed in the United States | 127 | ||
| Britain and the United States | 127 | ||
| Individualism, Welfare Capitalism and the Problem of Unemployment | 129 | ||
| Government and the Emergence of Mass Unemployment, 1929-32 | 130 | ||
| New Deal Reforms and the Unemployed, 1933-40 | 133 | ||
| The American Experience of Unemployment in the 1930s | 137 | ||
| Experiencing Relief | 139 | ||
| Unemployment, Race and Gender | 141 | ||
| Representation and Reality of Unemployment | 143 | ||
| The Struggles of the American Unemployed | 147 | ||
| The Communists and the Unemployed Councils | 148 | ||
| Non-communist Unemployed Protests | 153 | ||
| Conclusion | 158 | ||
| 7 Unemployment in Europe between the Wars | 160 | ||
| Unemployment Insurance in Europe | 161 | ||
| Unemployment Insurance in Crisis, 1929-33 | 165 | ||
| Public Works: Work-Creation and Coercion | 168 | ||
| Europe's Unemployed | 173 | ||
| Unemployed Women in Europe | 176 | ||
| Deprivations of the Unemployed | 178 | ||
| Contemporary Social Research into Unemployment | 182 | ||
| European Unemployed Struggles | 187 | ||
| Conclusion | 192 | ||
| Conclusions | 195 | ||
| Tables | 202 | ||
| Notes | 209 | ||
| Introduction | 209 | ||
| 1 Unemployment: History and Perspectives | 209 | ||
| 2 Government, Employers and Unemployment | 213 | ||
| 3 The Experience of Unemployment | 216 | ||
| 4 The Labour Party and Unemployment | 220 | ||
| 5 Unemployed Struggles | 223 | ||
| 6 The Unemployed in the United States | 226 | ||
| 7 Unemployment in Europe between the Wars | 230 | ||
| Conclusions | 234 | ||
| Tables | 234 | ||
| Select Bibliography | 235 | ||
| Britain | 235 | ||
| United States | 238 | ||
| Continental Europe | 239 | ||
| Index | 241 | ||
| American Liberty League | xii |