UNAO, a town and district of British India, in the Lucknow division of the United Provinces. The town is 10 m. N.E. of Cawnpore, on the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway. Pop. (1901), 13,109.
The District of Unao has an area of 1792 sq. m. It consists of a flat alluvial plain, lying north of the Ganges. Rich and fertile tracts, studded with groves, alternate with stretches of waste land and plains of barren user, the whole being intersected by small streams, used for irrigation. The Ganges is the only navigable river in the district, while the Sai forms its north-eastern boundary. The temperature varies from about 75° to 103° in the hot season and from 46° to 79° in the cold season. The annual rainfall averages about 35 in. Pop. (1901), 976,639, showing an increase of 2.4% in the decade. The principal crops are barley, wheat, pulses, rice and millets, with some cotton, sugar-cane and poppy. The district is crossed by the main line of the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway.
During the Mutiny of 1857-58 Unao was the scene of several severe engagements between General Havelock's little army and the rebels on his march to relieve Lucknow. On the death of Raja Jasa Singh, one of the leading rebels, and the capture of his two sons, the family estates were confiscated, and the villages either restored to their former owners or given to other landholders for their loyalty.
See Unao District Gazetteer (Allahabad, 1903).
UNCLE, the brother of a person's father or mother, also the husband of one's aunt (i.e. the sister of a father or mother). The French oncle, which appears in Anglo-French as uncle, comes from a Late Latin unculus, a shortened form of the Latin avanculus, a maternal uncle, the brother of one's mother. The word is a diminutive of avus, grandfather. The Latin for a paternal uncle is patruus. “Aunt” comes through the Old French aunte, ante, corrupted into the modern tante, from Latin amita, a father's sister, a paternal aunt, the maternal aunt being called matertera.
UNCTION (Lat. unctio, anointing, ungere, unguere, to smear with ointment, to anoint; cf. “ointment,” O.Fr. oignement, from oigner, mod. oindre, to anoint), the act of pouring, or rubbing oil, ointment or salve over or on to a person or object. The term is particularly used of the ceremonial practice of anointing with oil or unguents (see Anointing). The sacrament of the anointing of the sick in the Roman church is treated under Extreme Unction. The use of the term for religious fervour in speech has degenerated into its common meaning of exaggerated sentiment.
UNDER-CROFT, in architecture, a synonym for crypt (q.v.), a vaulted chamber under ground.
UNDERWRITER, one who insures ships and their cargoes from loss and damage, so called from his writing his name under the document or policy of insurance. A request to an underwriter to insure is termed the offering of a “risk,” and the word risk in marine insurance is equivalent to the liability of an underwriter under a contract. When the risk is divided up among several underwriters, each signs his name individually, putting opposite thereto the amount for which he accepts liability. Each signature has the effect of making a separate contract, in the terms of the policy, for the amount set opposite the name of the underwriter. (See Insurance: Marine.)
UNEMPLOYMENT, a modern term for the state of being unemployed among the working-classes. The social question involved is intimately bound up with that of relief of the poor, and its earlier history is outlined in the article Charity and Charities. It is more particularly within the 20th century that the problem of unemployment has become specially insistent, not by reason of its greater intensity—for it is open to considerable doubt whether, comparatively speaking, there was not more unemployment in the organized industrial communities of the early middle ages—but because the greater facilities for publicity, the growth of industrial democracy, the more scientific methods applied to the solution of economic questions, the larger humanitarian spirit of the times all demand that remedies differing considerably from those of the past should at least be tried. In most civilized countries attempts have been made to solve this or that particular phase of the problem by improved methods. There is, however, always a great difficulty in knowing the extent of unemployment even in any one particular country. No census has ever been taken in any country of those of the whole population who were employed and unemployed on any particular day, and even if it were possible to take such a census modern conditions of industry might render its results valueless almost immediately after. It would be complicated, too, by having of necessity to include the shiftless and unemployable sections of the population, as well as those on the borderland of employment (those who are worth some sort of wage in times of pressure), while at the same time it would be necessary, to make the census of practical value, to obtain returns of the demand for labour, in order to value the true character of the supply. Such statistics are obtainable possibly only in theory, but every country makes an endeavour to obtain statistics of a sort. In England the Board of Trade, for example, has compiled valuable memoranda on the percentages of unemployment in the more important trade union groups of trades, which may be taken as a measure of unemployment in the more highly organized industries; while other memoranda throwing light on the subject deal with the amount of time lost by workpeople through want of employment and other causes; with cyclical trade depressions; the extent to which female labour has displaced adult male labour of late years; seasonal industries and industries carried on by casual labour; emigration and immigration, &c., all intimately bound up with the study of the problem. The statistics issued by the Labour Bureaus of many of the states in the United States are of considerable value, in particular, those of Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Germany, France and Belgium also publish statistics, but like the figures of other countries, they far from represent the actual state of unemployment.
The actual causes of unemployment in any one country will always remain to a certain extent controversial, as will the comparative weight to be assigned to each cause. Putting aside the much disputed theories of economists as to the causes of cyclical depressions of trade, there are certain well-observed facts which present themselves in connexion with the question of unemployment, and to each one of them some contributory Causes of Unemployment. portion of blame may be assigned. These facts may be classified as (a) those over which the worker has no control, and (b) those which may be said to lie in the worker himself. Some of those under (a), of which it is impossible to give more than the more obvious examples, have, of course, been operating, especially in the United Kingdom, sometimes potently, sometimes slowly and almost unnoticed, over a long range of years. They are seasonal industries and industries carried on by casual labour. There are many industries affected by certain states of the weather or by the changes of the seasons, as the building and allied trades, the furriers' trade, confectionery trades, &c. But more important are those industries which depend largely in times of pressure on casual and unskilled labour, such as port and riverside work of all kinds, construction works and to a certain extent the iron and steel industries. Then there are a number of skilled trades which have about them continually a fringe of casual labour, for which employment is very intermittent.
To quote from the report of the British Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (1909):—
“The class of under-employed includes not merely the whole of the men in such occupations as dock and wharf labour and market porters, and a waxing and waning share of the lower grades of the building operations, but also a very extensive fringe of men more or less attached to particular industries, and working at them only by way of brief and casual jobs. “To go in” for one half-day, one day, two, three, four or five days out of the five and a half is common to boot making, coopering, galvanizing, tank-making, oil pressing, sugar boiling, piano-making, as it is to dock-labouring, stevedoring, crane-lifting, building. Some trades, like that of the London bakers, regularly employ more men on one or two days of the week than on others. In London a large body of men is always required for the Friday night baking when the work in preparation for Saturday and Sunday is we are told, exceedingly heavy. The usual hours of
