BRITISH SLUMP.

Grey River Argus, 17 February 1927, Page 2

BRITISH SLUMP.

In Wool Trade. WORKERS IN BAD WAY. (Received February 16 at It) p.m.) LONDON, February 16. The present vogue of knitted goods and of the short small skirt was one of the factors in the depression of the worsted trade, said Mr Wood (Secretary of the Woollen and Worsted Trades Federation) in the course of a paper before the Royal Statistical Society. The wool industry did not usually meet depression by discharging trained work people, but by short time. The mere figures of the unemployment, therefore, did not tell the whole tale of the depression. Reckoning the decline, both in the numbers employed and in their average earnings, the wool textile industry as a whole showed a 25 per cent, reduction in 1926, compared with May 1920. This depression had lasted for three years, and it showed no signs of lifting. There were 47,500 fewer persons employed in woollen and worsted manufacturing last year than in 1920, but an extra nneteen thousand were employed in the hosiery section.