DEPRESSION IN ENGLAND

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5205, 18 November 1927, Page 1

DEPRESSION IN ENGLAND

THOUSANDS LIVING ON THE DOLE. IMPRESSIONS OF VISITOR. Labour conditions in England are depressed to the utmost, according to Mr T. P. Sewell, radiologist at the Christchurch Hospital, who returned recently after a visit to Great Britain and the Continent.

Mr Sejwell said that in the town pf his birth, Sunderland, with about 160,000 inhabitants, there were 14,000 peoplei—9ooo men and 500'0 women — out of work and living on the dole. Industrial life was at a standstill, and throughout the shipbuilding yards scarcely a sign .of activity could be seen. Mr Sewell said that ones man he met, 27 years pf age, had not worked for three years, but was optimistically talking of getting married.

“I don’t know how they manage it,” he said. “AH the, trains at excursion time arg overcrowded with trippers, every unemployed man is a race follower, and all the women dress well. Yet some of them are perpetually out of work. They all look on the dole as a sort of bonus, and cannot even entertain the idea of! its being withdrawn.

“It seems to me that the British Government should provide work of somej kind for the people instead of allowing them to draw the dole for doing nothing.”