MINERS IN BAD CASE MR. GALSWORTHY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 477, 5 October 1928, Page 9

MINERS IN BAD CASE

MR. GALSWORTHY

PITIFUL CONDITIONS AT HOME MR. GALSWORTHY’S APPEAL (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Thursday. The “Daily Telegraph” gives promience to a two-column letter from Mr. John Galsworthy, author and dramatist, recounting the pitiable conditions in a mining village where two collieries have been closed and a third is wavering, so that three-quarters of the miners are unemployed. Mr. Galsworthy lays stress on the fact that out of 1,200,000 employees engaged in. the coal industry 300,000 are at present unemployed. Of these 200,000 must be regarded as perman ently unemployed. The writer discusses various measures for remedying these conditions.

including migration. He asks: Is it beyond statesmanship to devise a scheme of agricultural training in Britain or in the Dominions for 30,000 youths, strong and accustomed to hard work? The Government already has two training centres in East Anglia, he says. Why not increase these tenfold? The “Telegraph” says the most serious obstacles in the way of migration on a scale sufficient to overtake 10 years’ arrears are those raised in the Dominions. Mr. Galsworthy, it says, seems to be unaware of the extremely cautious attitude of the Dominions toward large-scale migration. Yet migration is the only remedy that can be applied, as in the use of 8,000 harvesters for Canada, large numbers of whom are expected to remain in that country.