GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

WORLD-CRISIS: INDU~TRIAL REVOLUTIONS 273
. Month Unemployment
1923 October: 19·%
November: 23·4%
December: 28·2%
1924 January : 26·5%
Fel>ruary: 25·1%
March: 16·6%
April : 10·4%
May: 8·6%
June: 10·5%
July: 12·5%
August: 12·4%
September: 10·5%
Weare not interested in currency questions as such
for the present. But it is clear (1) that the British unemployment
situation of 1922 is repeated hy Germany only
a y:ear later and (2) that the unemployment in Germany
as in Great Britain corresponds to the enormous increase
in employment" as registered by the expansio~ of trade
union membership of the post-war years. Under normal
conditions neither Great Britain nor Germany' was capable
~f giving employment to as many people as had
on account of the exigencies of the war period begun to
function as wage-earners and union members.
But in pre-war times such a condition would if at all
have been treated as absence of employment or "underemployment"
or perhaps simply poverty and would not
have been regarded as "technically speakiog" unemployment
at all. In any case the statistics of employment
would not have bothered about it. Thus considered,
unemployment to-day is by itself not a very significant
index to the comparative poverty or prosperity of a people
in reference to two dates. It is hardly possible to admit
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