IN SPITE OF THE STRIKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 250, 21 October 1926, Page 12

IN SPITE OF THE STRIKE.

MORE PROSPEROUS THAN EVER. CONDITION OF BRITAIN

The impression of England brought back' by Mr. J. W. Beanland, who has just returned to Christchurch from a seven months' tour of Australia,; Great Britain and . America, is that, ''despite, her troubles caused by the coal strike, she appears more prosperous than ever before. Mr. Beanland, accompanied by his wife, spent many weeks in the coal mining districts of the North of Sagland, and in an interview on Saturday he gave a reporter some of the impressions that he gathered.

Mr. Beanland said that it was fifteen years since he previously had visited England, and on his recent trip the country appeared to be much stronger than ever before. The coal strike was being felt by some people, but there seemed to be a general air of prosperity, and in the cities he missed the signs of poverty that were always present in the old days. In the mining districts the school boards gave the children two meals a day at the schools, and this ensured that no children attending schools would go hungry. Then the miners were provided with cottages by the companies rent free, and under normal conditions were supplied with twelve tons of coal a year, and lighting at a very small cost. They were now getting the benefit of these concesions, plus having their children fed by the school authorities, and plus the dole or strike pay which was being paid to them.

Asked what he thought would he the ultimate result of the strike, Mr. Beanland said that in the end the men would just go back to work, as they were drifting back already. Regarding the after-effects of the strike he thought it would be some little time before England got her markets back again. Furthermore, some of the railway companies wej£ converting steam locomotives into oil burners, and this would mean that less coal would be used. The iron and steel industries had suffered most on account of the strike.

After eleven weeks in England,-Mr. and Mrs. Beanland visited France and America. In the United States, he remarked, England was spoken of more highly than ever before, and there was a general impression that England was carrying the burdens of too many European countries.; Some prominent Americans he had spoken to were particularly proud of the fact that their ancestors were British. Whilst the average American loved his own country, and was proud if he could claim" to have come from English stock.