First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, front cover lettered in blind within a single blind fillet border (extremities slightly rubbed, some faint foxing to fore-edge, small bookseller’s label to front pastedown, pencilled ownership inscription to front free endpaper, notwithstanding a good copy). London, Longmans, Green, and Co, 1909.
The first book by the British economist and Liberal politician William Beveridge, ‘a pioneering study which explored the structural complexity of the market for labour’ (ODNB). Beveridge is best-known for the famous 1942 Beveridge Report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services, which formed the basis of the establishment of the welfare state in Britain.
