A  WIDER  MEANING  OF  UNEMPLOYED  IS  LEGITIMATE  g

to  get  sufficient  employment,  and  who  represent  a  genuine
over-supply  of  labour-power,  and  by  a  large  mass  of  lowskilled
  inefficient  labour  of  the  towns,  that  superfluous
mass  which  Mr.  Booth  reckoned  in  East  London  to
amount  to  100,000.
Although  the  Report  confines  “superfluity”  of  labourpower
  to  these  narrow  limits,  the  question  of  “  the  unemployed” ­
  admittedly  includes  others—viz.,  all  that  labour
whose  temporary  displacement  is  due  to  changes  in  methods
°f  industry,  changes  of  fashion,  changes  in  the  field  of
employment,  or  other  causes,  which  are  unforeseen  and
cannot  be  reasonably  discounted  or  provided  against  by
the  workers.
The  Unemployment  Report  thus  narrows  down  “unemployment” ­
  by  refusing  to  include  not  only  “  leakages”
m  employment  but  seasonal  idleness,  and  it  still  further
limits  superfluity  or  waste  of  labour-power  by  excluding
the  large  body  of  “unemployed”  whose  condition  is  due
t°  trade  depressions.

7>  A  Wider  Meaning  of  Unemployed  is
Legitimate.
I  claim  to  have  shown  prima  facie  reasons  for  a  wider
application  of  the  term  “  unemployment”  than  commends
itself  to  the  official  mind,  by  the  inclusion  of  all  forms
|'f  involuntary  leisure  suffered  by  the  working  classes.
hs  connotation  has  the  advantage  of  being  in  closest
accord  with  the  general  usage  of  “unemployed,”  and  in
this  sense  I  shall  continue  to  apply  the  term.  The
more  scientific  definition  would,  however,  identify  unemployment ­
  with  the  total  quantity  of  human  labour-P°ver
  not  employed  in  the  production  of  social  wealth,