"Unemployment" origin wrong in today's WALL STREET JOURNAL

[Baker, John]

        For those interested in the article by Cynthia Crossen, it can be viewed at

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/03/financial1047EST0058.DTL

        The article does suggest that "unemployed" gained its current meaning of forced idleness only in the 1870s.

        Crossen is actually using etymology to make historical points, and going astray as she does so.  Her thesis is that unemployment is a product of the industrial revolution and was unknown in America prior to that time.  Actually, forced idleness among the able-bodied (whether or not called unemployment) is a very old phenomenon and was, for example, well-known in ancient Rome.  That was somewhat alleviated in America because of the existence of large amounts of untilled potential farmland, a phenomenon having nothing to do with the industrial revolution.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Shapiro [mailto:fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 7:23 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Unemployment" origin wrong in today's WALL STREET JOURNAL


Yes, the Wall Street Journal is wrong that the word "unemployment" didn't
exist until the late 1800s ("unemployment" is the word, Barry, connoting a
sustained condition -- everyone admits that the word "unemployed" was
around before then).  But it is very hard to find uses of
"unemployment" before the late 1800s.  A very great historian, E.
P. Thompson, wrote in _The Making of the English Working Class_ that he
had found uses of the word earlier than the OED's (adding a snide remark
that swallows appear in the British Isles weeks before the Times reports
them, a remark that appears less snide now in view of the ease with which
I and Barry and OED3 are demolishing OED first uses).

Thompson, however, did not give any citations.  Some years ago I
contributed an 1800 citation to the OED.

Fred


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