A hundred years on from a ground-breaking investigation into unemployment, Richard Bilton compares the lives of the jobless in 1910 with their modern-day counterparts. A century ago single mums lived on the brink of starvation - now our costly benefits system means that children do not go hungry. But has the welfare state created new problems? And as the government embarks on the biggest shake-up of benefits for a generation, what lessons can we learn from research into unemployment carried out a hundred years ago?