SECURITY VERSUS INSECURITY 121 



known as the business cycle mysterious as to cause 

 but not as to effects which periodically produces in 

 our industrial civilization a decline in the volume of 

 trade, a sharp drop in prices, a shrinkage in the 

 amount of credit, a decrease in the demand for goods, 

 a decline in the volume of production, and in conse- 

 quence an increase in the number of unemployed. 

 Men and women at work in factories and offices and 

 stores, workers in building and in railroading, all the 

 myriads engaged in the services, trades, and profes- 

 sions barbers, waiters, actors, artists, reporters, 

 architects, who are busily at work during periods of 

 prosperity and good times suddenly find themselves 

 out of work, while those who remained employed find 

 themselves in most cases working only a part of each 

 week and at lower wages and salaries. A force beyond 

 their control and in most cases utterly beyond their 

 comprehension suddenly leaves them without the in- 

 come with which to pay rent, buy food, purchase 

 clothing, and pay their debts. 



But equally through no fault of their own, other 

 millions of cogs in our industrialized world and inter- 

 dependent economic system find themselves periodi- 

 cally without the income which will enable them to 

 buy the necessaries of life because of seasonal unem- 

 ployment, or technological unemployment, or what 

 I call style unemployment. Just as the winter season 

 tends to throw building-workers out of employment, 

 and the invention of new machines and new tech- 

 niques tends to throw out of employment those en- 



