This four-volume collection explores the idea that, for Victorians and Edwardians, the meanings attached to work and the meanings attached to being without work were always dependent upon each other, knotted together by the imperative for a man to desire employment and be willing to work. Mechanization and the decline of old trades, the creation of single-industry cities and towns, the migration of agricultural labourers from the countryside to these cities and to London, the intensification of the sweated industries, and the displacement of the labour of adult men by the labour of women and adolescent boys all contributed to urgent conversations about the relationships between work and unemployment and are examined through primary sources. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this collection will be of great interest to students of British History.

This volume explores primarily late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century efforts to solve the problem of unemployment in the context of the new understandings of 'unemployment'. The sources show the continuing power of discovering men's commitment to work by finding ways to make them work. This volume focuses on emigration to put unemployed men to work in the British colonies, the various projects to employ urban men without work on the land, and the increasing 'Intervention of the State' in efforts like emigration and labour colonies. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume will be of great interest to students of British History.

This volume examines the ideals and experiences of work during the long nineteenth century. The meanings attached to work had resonance in multiple aspects of people's lives, and the sources consider this breadth. The primary sources examine the association of work with respectability, the challenges industrialization posed to men's traditional labour and identities, and the pressures placed on working women by the increasingly normative domestic ideal. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume will be of great interest to students of British History.

This volume explores questions surrounding what types of assistance were available to people out of work and who should receive that assistance during the nineteenth century. Documents on the Poor Law, voluntary organizations, and work relief schemes all demonstrate how central the work imperative was in the ways officials decided which applicants for assistance were deserving and which were not. Sources address many of the significant issues surrounding local relief to the unemployed, the growing influence of methodical approaches to charitable giving, and the use of measures of character embedded in the work imperative to choose worthy men to relieve. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume will be of great interest to students of British History.

This volume explores the idea of unemployment, as nineteenth-century economists constructed the category 'unemployment', referring to a structural problem that caused 'genuine workmen' to be temporarily unemployed through no fault of their own. Sources examine how social thinkers and politicians put forward a range of arguments about the reasons for unemployment, the increasingly detailed categorization of people without work, and the growing movement to represent 'labour' both inside and outside Parliament, in large part to address the problem of unemployment. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume will be of great interest to students of British History.