DETROIT’S EXAMPLE

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1930, Page 2

DETROIT’S EXAMPLE

MEETING UNEMPLOYED

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 13.

A major attempt to combat unemployment by the concerted effort of a great city’s government and its industrial leaders has been started in Detroit, one of America’s greatest centres of industry. While 75,030 jobless citizens waited hopefully, plans to forestall the suffering which is otherwise certain to occur this winter were being hurried forward. With the first bitterness of cold weather in the air, 21 of the city’s millionaire business men met with Mayor Frank Murphy to decide what industry could do to help. It was predicted that the city’s manufacturing plants would' create 25,000 new jobs, Edsel Ford, Walter P. Chrysler, Charles T. and Lawrence Fisher nnd Alvan Macauley, heads of great corporations, took part in the conference, and G. Hall Roosevelt, banker and chairman of the Mayor’s unemployment committee, announced that the city’s proposal that manufacturers provide jobs by shortening the hours of workers now employed, had met with general approval.

Mayor Murphy established registration bureaus for the jobless at strategic points and in three days the books carried 75.000 names and were still growing. Over the rndio and through the newspapers Apnents were broadcast for aid of the 12,0CX) persons in actual want. School children collected discarded clothing nnd shoes. Money flowed in. The police force volunteered to give amounts ranging from four siblings a month for patrolmen to 85 dollars for department evocatives. Food tickets worth eight shillings were given out. Volunteer workers visited the most needy with food, clothing and med'cal supplies, while legal aid Was obtained to prevent eviction for non-payment of rent. Immediate needs taken care of, the Mayor and his committee turned to establishing some permanent-’ relief plans. The city eventually planned to establish a municipal free employment bureau and to give immediate relief to those in danger of suffering, as well as starting 18 million dollars’ worth of municipal construction work. Meanwhile, among the thousands of jobless men who stand hopelessly on the street corners and about the employment bureaux the. sale of Communist publications was reported to have fallen off, obviously the men being buoyed up with promises of work shortly.

FORD SPRINGS SURPRISE. » When the perplexing problem was under discussion, Henry Ford, in a hew book, predicted that in 1950 American working men will receive a minimum wage of 27 dollars a day, the five-day week will be observed universally, and there will be no unemployment, Ford foresees a new industriel revolution in thp next 2Q years, out of which the worker will emerge g man of leisnre, capable of balancing production and consumption and banish" ing unemployment, The wage prediction was based on the rise since 1910, Twenty years ago Ford was paying an average of a shilling an hour, while now ho is paying twice that amount. Ford lays down four principles for American industry: —(1) To make an ever-increasing large quantity of goods of the-best possible quality; to make them in the best and most economical fashion; and to force them out on the market, (2) To strive always for higher quality nnd lower prices, as veil as lower costs, (8) Raige wages gradually hut continuously, and never to cut them, (4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner, so that the benefits of lowcost production may reach him.

This Utopian idea of Henry Ford left the American army of unemployment cold, for they are principally concerned about the vita] present, and not in wliat might happen 20 years hence, With starvation facing them the idle workers passed by the idea of the motor magnate as a palliative impregnated with propaganda calculated to pacify the present discontent throughout the country,

CAUSES OF DEPRESSION. s Observers suggest that much of the national unemployment has been caused by American inventive genius producing machines which have thrown thousands of workers into the 'idle column, in addition to outside nations desiring less of America’s manufactur--6 8, owing to depression in those outside countries and a policy of retrenchment in vogue there. Furthermore, it is being realised more and more that these same outside nations are rehabilitating themselves to isuch a degree that they produce most of what they require and are not dependent on America for many lines of materials. In fact, they have goods themselves to sell. COUNCIL TO AID JOBLESS. A comprehensive national plan for furnishing work to the jobless, and providing a. safeguard against future industrial depression, was suggested in Washington bv Mr J. Rogers Flannery, of Pittsbury, one of the Industrial giants of He suggested the organisation of a national council in every community, to stabilise employment. He urged President Hoover to create a national commission on public improvements, fp develop plans whereby the Federal, State

and municpal governments might lay out a definite programme for ten years, or more, of public improvements to be started in times of depression. He also urged compulsory unemployimient insurance, the employer to share the cost. Tn the present crisis he suggested less hours of work to give a spread and allow unemployed to share in the work available.