Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1928. BRITAIN'S INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 173, 24 July 1928, Page 6

Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1928. BRITAIN'S INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM.

For the oauae that lacks assistance, For the *crong that needs resistance, For th* future in the distance. And the good that toe can do-

In January last the British Government set up an organisation known as the Industrial Transference Board to provide or suggest remedies for the depression in some of Britain's staple industries. The special question that the Board was to investigate was the possibility of relieving the existing industrial pressure in the areas of depressed trade. The Board has now issued its report, and it can hardly be regarded as a consoling or encouraging document. The report points out that there are 200,000 miners out of work at Home, and in the other "heavy" industries —shipbuilding and iron and steel —there are at least 100,000 idle. These are the industries by which Britain must stand or fall, but the best that the report can offer as a remedy for this deplorable state of affairs is "the removal of men from the depressed industries to areas where the prospects are more favourable." It seems to us that this proposal largely leaves out of account the ignorance, the poverty and the conservatism of such workers, their strong attachment to local and traditional conditions, and their inability to turn their highlyspecialised skill to any other purpose elsewhere.

As an alternative method of relief the report lays a great deal of stress on emigration. But here, again, Ave cannot say that we are impressed by its grasp of the situation. It is an unfortunate fact that, as the members of the Tranference Board put it, the absorption of Britain's surplus population by the oversea Dominions has been in rece»t years "disappointingly slow." From the British standpoint there is something radically wrong with a system which allowed Canada last year to receive 82,000 Continental immigrants and increased Australia's non-British population by 22,000. And it is equally certain that the Dominions are nowhere near "the point of saturation" so far as area and industrial potentialities are concerned. But the report appears to assume that a continuous flow of British emigrants to the Dominions can be established and maintained merely by simplifying regulations and paying passage money; and here we must venture to dissent.

Statistics show a heavy fall in the number of "assisted" immigrants received by Australia and New Zealand, which strikes the Board as deplorable, and the report suggests that high fares, heavy contingent expenses and complicated procedure are the chief reasons for this diminution. But surely members of the Board must be aware that Australia and New Zealand have their own industrial troubles, that their labour market is overcrowded, and that the workers on this side of the world would naturally object to a large influx of British labour which, by intensifying industrial competition at a time when openings for employment are limited, would tend to lower their own wages and forfie down their standard of living. We have always held that, under favourable conditions, emigration from Britain to the Dominions must be beneficial and profitable to the whole Empire. But there is nothing to be gained by shutting our eyes to the many serious obstacles which just now prevent such a transference of population to the Dominions as this report suggests.