Issues of work and leisure are topical at the moment. We are living in a period of long-term, mass unemployment in much of the Western world. In Britain and some other parts of Europe it is approaching the scale of the 1930s.² In the aftermath of the Great Depression, and particularly in the period of postwar reconstruction, a consensus emerged committed to policies of full employment. This was to be achieved on the basis of steady economic growth, which was also to provide for a rising standard of living and a gradually increasing amount of leisure time.