FULL EMPLOYMENT AS A POLICY ISSUE

Passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 is the most recent step in the development of a national full employment policy. This article traces the origin of the legislative debate over full employment back to the 1940s, the only previous time that Congress gave serious consideration to full employment legislation. It analyzes the conflicting economic and political interests and philosophies that led to the defeat of the Full Employment Bill of 1945 and to passage of weaker legislation, the Employment Act of 1946, which dropped the commitment to full employment. The article then traces the contours of unemployment since World War II: recurrent recessions; significant unemployment between recessions; the unequal distribution of joblessness, hitting hardest at groups such as minorities, women, and youths; and growing urban and regional unemployment. Some of the hidden social, human and economic costs of unemployment are explored. So is the relationship between unemployment and crime, poverty, welfare, the urban crisis and inequality. Full employment reemerged as a major issue in the 1970s because of the impetus from groups whose unemployment problems persist between recessions. Coalitions of these groups pressed for a national policy to secure full employment for all groups. This led to passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. But the controversy over full employment has not ended. Attempts to implement the Act, the article concludes, may heighten underlying controversies over issues such as inflation, wage, price and profit controls, the environment, and job creation and may make full employment one of the leading domestic issues of the 1980s.     

Plastic Hinge Length for Lightly Reinforced Rectangular Concrete Walls

This research investigates the plastic hinge length in lightly reinforced rectangular walls typically found in regions of low-to-moderate seismicity. Poor performance has been exhibited by lightly reinforced concrete walls in past earthquake events. A series of finite element analyses have been carried out which demonstrate that if the longitudinal reinforcement ratio in the wall is below a certain threshold value, there will not be sufficient reinforcement to cause secondary cracking, and instead fracture of the longitudinal reinforcement at a single crack could occur. A plastic hinge length equation has been derived based on the results from the numerical simulations.     

Decreasing experiences of home range,outdoor spaces,activities and companions: changes across three generations in Sheffield in north England

Home range is commonly understood to be the distance from home that children are allowed to go in the outdoor environment with the term being used within various academic disciplines. Different factors influence children's home range including traffic, age, parental fears and understandings of what it means to be a good parent. Research addressing home range over different generations has identified a context of changes in the built environment, demography and technology. This paper reports results from three generations of two families in Sheffield in the north of England and confirms a reduction in four major domains: home range, variety of outdoor spaces visited, range of activities undertaken and the number of companions.     

Establishing Connections,Restoring Relationships: Exploring the Historiography of Nursing in Britain

This paper provides a comparative historiographical framework within which to reconsider the history of nursing. It asks why nursing has remained largely sidelined within the history of medicine, while the latter has gained mainstream respectability in the wider field of historical research. Gender historians are challenged to look at the under‐explored aspects of nursing's history such as pre‐Nightingale nurses and nursing, and the multiple and international meanings of race, class and gender as experienced by this unique cohort of women and men. The paper draws upon key texts in the history of nursing and of medicine and includes a discussion about use of imagery within significant publications and what this says about intended readerships. It concludes that, unlike medicine, nursing professionals have to some extent hijacked the history of nursing, while the subject has been further hampered by Florence Nightingale's legacy and the subsequent emphasis on the professionalisation of nursing.