NEVER LOST HOPE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 93, 30 January 1928, Page 5

NEVER LOST HOPE

INDUSTRY IN BRITAIN. SPEECH OF PRINCE OF WALES. NEW ERA OF PROSPERITY. {Per Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) LONDON, January 29. "We sat long in the sombre darkness vff post-war depression, deluded more than once by what has proved to be only the false dawn, and we have learnt to mistrust the prophets. Heaven forbid that I prophesy, but we have never lost hope. We have held, on, grinned and borne it. Maybe we •are now,going to get our reward," said the Prince of wales, in what is agreed to be the best speech ; of his career, at the banquet of the Birmingham Jewellers and Silversmiths' Association. His Royal Highness said that the recent trade returns showed that despite black spots on the business i horizon, and despite the handicap under -which we had started work,at the end of 1928, when many markets were temporarily lost, we had really wiped out all the deficit and started on the up-grade again. Employers and employed had come to see that their ifundamental interests in large production and thriving trade were the same. The meeting at Burlington House gave the strongest reason for hope that a new era of prosperity, was opening. The Prince humorously remarked that the invitation to Birmingham made one feel that he was regarded at least as 18 carat. 'Their industry ■was the oldest of human handicraft. Though he could not say positively that the Mea of ear-rings pre-dated the idea of trousers, he had certainly noticed that excavations indicated that the first job of historic craftsmen was attractively to ornament their lady friends. Describing how man became inflicted with the untold misery of the armourplated boiled shirt, the Prince said it was the jewellers who first invented the stud. When it was found, a century ago, that a new-fangled invention, namely, the mangle, Smashed the buttons on our ancestors' comfortable, soft-pleated shirts and that studs would not stay put in a soft shirt, it was decided to starch the fronts.