The fifth volume of The New Survey of London Life and Labour and The Unemployed Man are two books which deal with opposite aspects of life among the working classes in London to-day. The former describes the employed working man and relates the conditions of his employment, his wages and mode of living. The latter gives an account of the man without a job, the psychological reaction upon him of his position and the effect of the system of Unemployment Insurance in mitigating his pitiful state.

The New Survey of London Life and Labour is a modern version of the great survey initiated by Charles Booth in 1886, the results of which fill seventeen volumes under the general title of Life and Labour of the People in London. This grand inquest had revealed the horrible fact that during a period of unrivalled national prosperity as many as thirty per cent, of the inhabitants of London— more than a million men, women and children—were living at or beneath the bare level of subsistence. This discovery and the other revelations which emerged from Charles Booth’s survey had a very pressing influence on subsequent social legislation. And to anyone acquainted with the social work of the last thirty years the importance of such a survey in estimating the necessity and incidence of reform must be too evident to require emphasis. The method of investigation employed by Booth was, for those days, exceptionally scientific, but the technique made use of in compiling the New Survey is of a kind to give more accurate results.