Book excerpt: The Unemployed, a classic study of the effect of unemployment and of the ways of relieving it upon actual, typical families of the 1930s and 1940s, is a vivid, startling picture of the demoralizing influence and consequences of America�s relief policies during the Depression years. The study comprises an incisive interpretation of the problem and a series of absorbing human interest stories of representative families on relief�cases selected from experiences of relief, including the records of families from various religious groups in an exhaustive study conducted in New York City.