
Out of Work
The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts
Alexander Keyssar(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 31. March 1986
Book
Paperback/Softback
488 pages
978-0-521-29767-7 (ISBN)
Description
Out of Work chronicles the history of unemployment in the United States. It traces the evolution of the problem of joblessness from the early decades of the nineteenth-century to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Challenging the widely held notion that the United States was a labour-scarce society in which jobs were plentiful, it argues that unemployment played a major role in American history long before the crash of the stock market in 1929. Focusing on the state of Massachusetts, Professor Kevssar analyses the economic and social changes that gave birth to the prevalent concept of unemployment. Drawing on previously untapped sources - including richly detailed statistics and vivid verbatim testimony - he demonstrates that joblessness was a pervasive feature of working-class life from the 1870s to the 1920s. The book describes the ingenious, yet quite costly, strategies that unemployed workers devised to cope with the joblessness in the absence of formal governmental assistance. It also explores the many dimensions of working-class life that were profoundly affected by recurrent layoffs and the chronic uncertainty of work. Finally, it demonstrates that the fundamental contours of the Massachusetts experience were repeated, sooner or later, throughout the United States.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
785 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-29767-7 (9780521297677)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
03/1986
Cambridge University Press
€80.47
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Previous edition

Book
03/1986
Cambridge University Press
€80.47
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Content
List of illustrations and tables; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The social origins of unemployment; 3. The era of uncertainty; 4. Sharing the burden; 5. From place to place; 6. Coping; 7. Organizing labor; 8. From the Common to the State House; 9. 'The greatest evil of our competitive industrial system'; 10. Epilogue; Appendices; Notes; Index.