The only thing softening the blow was that the economy had already conditioned workers to endure a quota of misery. The general insecurity of wage work and its rising incidence in American society made the depression only a more intense version of what many workers already knew. In the generally prosperous years of 1890 and 1900, when the federal census measured unemployment, 15–20 percent of workers in industrial states lacked work at some time during the year. The average duration of unemployment ranged between three and four months.
