attention. However, excepting the subjects treated in the next two
chapters, the one remaining that is most important at this time is the
problem of unemployment.

In every country and at all times where the wage system prevails, some
wage-workers, now more and now less, are "out of work" and unable to
get it. The proportion that they constitute of all workers cannot,
with the aid of any existing statistics, be exactly told, nor
can exact comparisons be made between different countries. Of
the magnitude, importance, and difficulty of this "problem of the
unemployed" there is, however, no question. It is greatest, speaking
generally, in manufacturing industries, tho, among the various kinds,
great differences in this respect appear. In 1900 the United States
census reported that of all persons in gainful occupations 2.5 per
cent had been unemployed more than half the year, 8.8 per cent from
three to six months, and 11 per cent one to three months, a total of
22.3 per cent more than one month.[7] In 1911 in a large group
(nearly all) of the manufacturing industries, the minimum number of
wage-earners employed (in January) was 13 per cent below the maximum
(in November). In some the difference was much greater (e.g., 24
per cent in the iron industry, 63 per cent in the brick and tile
industry). Statistics of unemployment among trade-unions in New York
and Massachusetts indicate that the annual average of unemployment is
between 12 and 15 per cent. In some years upwards of 10 per cent
of all the working time of the wage-earning population is lost by
unemployment.

Sec. 12. #Evils of unemployment.# A considerable part of the total in
an ordinary year may be set aside as "normal" in the sense that it is
allowed for in the wage-workers' plans;[8] and a part of it may even
be desirable. Yet there remains an inconceivable sum of suffering in
the lives of the workers, and an enormous economic waste of
productive energy not only for them but for the whole community.
The irregularity, and occasionally the excessive duration, of these
periods of unemployment too often makes unemployment not a beneficent
vacation (comparable to shorter hours), but a period of tragic
anxiety, demoralizing and unfitting for return to work. Irregular work
is generally recognized to be a greater cause of poverty and of actual
pauperism than is a low wage regularly received.

Sec. 13. #Definition of unemployment.# Unemployment is the state of a
wage-