During the month of September, however, employment revived.[1] Besides Government work in shipbuilding yards, certain branches of the woollen industry were working at full pressure on the production of blankets and cloth for uniforms; the leather and boot and shoe industries on some sides received an impetus from the large orders placed for army boots; hosiery and knitted goods were required in large quantities.  Speaking generally, industries whose products were required for the army and navy were strained to the extent of their resources.  But each industry supplies a large variety of goods of many different grades, and machinery and works equipment cannot always be easily converted to the production of other classes of commodities; so that even in the woollen and boot trades, for example, the whole industries were not uniformly busy.  The many industries, however, to which the war brought no orders, enjoyed but a slight recovery, and in some cases none at all.  As the month of September proceeded, the newspapers triumphantly referred to the fall in the percentage of unemployment.  The truth is that the decline was by no means general or uniform, but was brought about, not so much by the gradual revival of normal activity, but by the rush of Government orders.  For instance, the cotton industry remained in the trough of a deep depression, and the furniture and piano making trades profited little.  Further, no account was taken of the prevalence of short time, though over a large field it was widespread especially amongst women.  What the real position of the labour market was after we had been at war two months, cannot be precisely determined, but it was certainly more serious than the Board of Trade percentage would seem to indicate.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The percentage of unemployment at the beginning of October in the trades compulsorily insured against unemployment was 5.1, as compared with 6.3 at the beginning of the previous month.]

[Footnote 2:  “Certain confidential statistical enquiries on a large scale are said to support the inference to be drawn from the figures published by the Board of Trade, that at least 10 per cent of the fifteen million wage-earners in the United Kingdom are not at work at all, whilst quite as large a proportion are on short time.  But out of more than a million men whose services the employers have thus temporarily dispensed with, some nine hundred thousand are being clothed, or are going to be clothed, in khaki, and given Government pay.  Thus the actual unemployment among men is, except in (certain) black patches, only sporadic and scarcely more than we are accustomed to.  Very different is the situation of the women wage-earners.  Of these apparently half a million are now unemployed, and twice as many are working only short time.  Though the industrial situation is considerably better than would have been predicted for the end of the second month of a world war, it was, in fact, worse than it has been at any time during the past quarter of a century” (New Statesman, Oct. 3, 1914).]