The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1920. UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 21, 20 October 1920, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1920. UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN

The rioting and violence which were witnessed in London on Monday will serve only to make a bad state of affairs worse, but it is painfully clear that the problem of unemployment in Great Britain is at a serious pass, and calls aloud for remedy. If, however, they bad gone to the root of the matter the London unemployed would have directed their march not to Downing Street, but to tho headquarters of the Miners' Federation. They have every right to expect what relief tho Government can afford, but the real remedy for unemployment is to be found not in such palliatives in the way of special works as Hit. Lloyd George very readily promised, but in a reversal of conditions which produce it and make it inevitable; The miners' strike is at the head and front of these conditions. The industrial outlook for the winter months in any case was somewhat unpromising. By cut-" ting off supplies of coal tho miners have made it almost desperate. Themselves highly paid, in assured employment, and with the option of adding heavily to their present earnings simply by doing a normal amount of work, they are attempting to enforce their latest demands by withholding the coal' which in nearly all other industries is tho means of industrial life—that is to say, they aro condemning hundreds of thousands of their fellow-workers to unemployment and all the misery and suffering it occasions. An unemployment demonstration in Great Britain at this time which ignores the miners manifestly ignores the chief factor making for unemployment. It of course would bo absurd to accuse the miners of being alone responsible for the decline in industrial activity which' has cast so many people out of work, bub. they are wholly responsible for the fact that unemployment now threatens" to develop rapidly on a vastly greater scale than it need or would have developed had they remained at work. The responsibility of the miners is measured by the fact that it is open to do at once far more than the Government or any other agency in tho country can do to relieve unemployment simply by . returning to work and raising tho output of coal to a normal level. Until this vital consideration is seized and aefced upon by thoso who speak for tho unemployed,- little headway will be made towards securing for these victims of industrial dislocation the redress to which on every ground of justice they are entitled.

The extent to which the position has been aggravated by the miners' strike at present overshadows other aspects of the unemployment problem, -but even before it had been thus aggravated the position was grave. _ So far' as the after-war period h Concerned, unemployment in the United Kingdom reached its high-water mark on May 2, 1911), when a million and a quarter persons were registered as out of work. On July 16 this year, according to the register of the employment exchanges, the total had fallen to 309,000, but this figure was itself higher by mere than five thousand than the return for the preceding week. _ Though it was much better than Jn the demobilisation period, when the initial problems of reconstruction were being faced, the employment position lately disclosed was by no means good, and threatened to become worse. Though they afford a rough and ready comparison, the quoted are not fully comprehensive. Moreover, apart from the numbers actually unemployed, many workers in Britain have lately been working half or part time. These unsatisfactory industrial conditions, and the tuadc depression they betoken, were attributed to a variety of causes, of which the most important are a declining demand for commodities at home and abroad, high working costs, dear money, high taxation, American competition, and "psychological causes," which may be taken to cover the causes of morbid and unhealthy industrial unrest. To an extent these conditions, making for unemployment, could be remedied only by time and long-continued effort. They are the outcome in part of the imposition of war burdons and of after-war exhaustion, not only in Britain, but in some of the countries with which she trades. Evidently, however, the antidote to these conditions, as far as it is available js to be found in organising and directing _ the productive energies of tho nation to the best advantage. War effects cannot speedily be shaken off, and conditions of external trade and foreign competition are in a measure beyond control. Given loyal co-operation in industry, however, much might bn done with ever-increasing benefit to stimulate and sustain the demand for commodities which determines the demand for labour. With industrial peace and unrestricted production; particularly in vital kefir industries like coal mining, Britain would bo well able, even in these difficult times, to keep the vast majority of her working population steadily employed and to provide for the support of those who from time to time were unavoidably thrown out of work. _ Sustained production would stabilise if it did not lower working costs. A lowering or stabilisation ot prices and a consequent stimulus to the effective demand for commodities would follow in natural sequence, and the way would be opened to the more or less rapid rc-estnblishment of industrial stability and general prosperity. Instead of combined effort on those lines to eliminate unemployment and promote prosperity, the miners' strike hascome as the culmination for the time being of

the policy of those sections of organised Labour which apparently arc intent on completely wrecking the weakened industries of the United Kingdom and making prosperity unattainable. Promising as ft does to plunge- the industrial)' population of the United Kingdom into; frightful distress during the coming winter, and defeat every effort now beingj made to limit unemployment, this strike emphasises as nothing else has done the purely destructive aim and effect of the policy adopted bv f.hnw cupf.ic-ns of organised Labour which label themselves militant. There is solid weight in the contention attributed to-day to Lord Weir that if the Government is under an obligation to relieve unemployment it should have a voice in dealing with the policy which produces unemployment, and is justified in seeking a revision of trade union policy. With the ob-ject-lesson of the miners' strike before their eyes, the organised workers of Great Britain ought to have little difficulty in realising that a root cause of unemployment and ail that it entails is to be found in fcho policy of destruction to which so many of them have given blind adhesion.