BRITISH UNEMPLOYED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9032, 20 January 1908, Page 5

BRITISH UNEMPLOYED.

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association - 15y Electric Telegraph Copyright.

CONFERENCE AT HULL

SPEAKERS OPPOSE CHARITABLE

RELIEF

VARIOUS SOCIALISTIC PROPOSALS.

Received January ,19, 4.40 p.m LONDON, January 18.

The majority of the delegates attending the Labour Party's Conference at Hull were present at a special conference of the Trade Union Socialist arid Co-operative organisations on the unemployed question. Mr P. F. Curran, member for Jarrow, {resided, and said the £200,000 granted for relief purposes was a mere drop in the ocean. They would not accept Government philanthropy or help under conditions- of charity. As long as the law of private enterprise was the guiding prhicipie.of the world's industry and commerce, they would always have unemployed. They would not solve the question until they curtailed incomes of the rich, who were in possession and thereby added to th2 incomes of the poor. They desired legislation to prevent the chaos and ruin that would follow the Uprising of the people crying for bread.

Mr Ramsay Mac Donald, Labour M.P. for Leicester, protested against the habit of voting money in a panic, and moved a resolution declaring that unemployment was not caused by freetrade and not averted by periods of good trade, but was a permanent feature of the present industrial oiganisation. The resolution also urged the vigorous use of legislative and administrative powers, including the shortening of hours of labour of public and other employees, and the pVotaction of the worker against the operation of v land and other monopolies, and called upon the Government to fulfil its promise made in His Majesty the Kind's speech in i 906, and amend the Unemployed Act. The resolution set forth that such an amendment to be satisfactory must embody the principles embodied in the Labor Party's Bill. Mr J. O'Grady, Labour member for Leeds East', in seconding tha resolution, said that the Queen's Unemployed Fund, though promoted by a woman with'a big heart, had doiie more real damage in common /nanhood among' unemployed than anything during the last twenty years. It degraded and demoralised them. Protection as a remedy against unemployment was a'jsurd to rest on, and freetrade was doubly absurd. Several delegates advised caution, lest the rest uf the Labour cause should be weakened in the country. The resolution was carried with enthusiasm: A purely Socialist amendment was negatived by 210 to 18.