BRITAIN’S UNEMPLOYED.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 253, 6 September 1928, Page 4

BRITAIN’S UNEMPLOYED.

The general sense of the most interesting report issued by the Industrial Transference Board is that there is no panacea for unemployment, but that unemployment will certainly yield to the determined and converging application of a variety of cures. In other words, unless everyone helps, unemployment will r.ot only continue, but will become worse because it carries in itself the seeds of personal demoralisation. It is everybody’s job to find a job for everybody who wants one. Even private employers are not absolved of that responsibility of doing what they can towards easing what is really a national disease. . . . The disease is settled deep in the internals of the basic industries of the country. The most casual glance shows that there is a high power of spending in the country as a whole. Briefly, it comes from the industries which are new or of recent origin. These comparatively new industries (such as the motor industry, the electrical industry, the artificial silk industry, and so on) are placed in the Midlands and in the South of England, which are becoming rapidly industrialised. That a genuine amount of wealth is being made from these industries, and is spreading through all grades of society is proved by the satisfactory rise in the savings of the people. Nevertheless the basic or heavy industries of the country are essential. We shall never have economic security or a proper balance of well-being until they revive. The unemployment in the iron and steel trades, cotton, shipbuilding, and, above all, of course, in the coal industry, is appalling.— London Spectator.