UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 198, 23 August 1928, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN.

Unemployment in Britain continues to increase in spite of the fact that trade generally has improved and all accounts tell of increased prosperity. The depression is chiefly in the "heavy ' industries, coal and iron, and also in cotton. The depression in the coal trade is the most severe, and Mr. Baldwin recently appealed to some 150,000 employers asking that each should help to solve the problem created by severe unemployment in the depressed mining areas by offering work to men and boys from these areas. Also arrangements have been made for sending some thousands of unemployed to assist in harvesting work in Canada. Emigration, at present, however, cannot solve the problem. The difficulty in Great Britain is to provide for the normal increase in population, and this difficulty seems likely to be permanent. If we take the Board of Trade returns for the first seven months of the last three years we find that exports in 1926 were £395,345,000; in 1927, £398,458,000; and in the present year £416,115,000. The total volume of trade increased during the first seven months of this year by some £20,000,000 as compared with 1926. July has been a fairly busy month at Home, with an upward trend of trade, and the total exports were higher than they have been for a couple of years. Yet the total number of unemployed on the 13t$ of this month was 290,050 more than a year ago. The peak of unemployment was in 1921, when the figures as given on June 3 of that year showed that there was a total of 2,580,429 registered as unemployed. These figures dropped by over 1,000,000 in 1925, and, while there was an increase of some 200,000 in 1926 due to the strike, last year the number had dropped to 1,050,117. The latest figures, therefore, given for the first two weeks of this month, show that there has been an increase of nearly 300,000 as compared with last year, and of 9279 as compared with the previous fortnight. Since the trade returns are so encouraging, Mr. Baldwin's plan for moving the unemployed from the depressed areas to other places where trade is buoyant seems hopeful as far as removing a portion of the load of unemployment is concerned. But it cannot touch the root of the difficulty, which is that while Great Britain might in time be able to provide for a stationary population, she does not seem able to offer much hope of employment for any increase. Some of the depression, especially in the cotton industry, is due to overcapitalisation, and the example of Baldwins Limited in writing down their capital might well be followed Vy others. The heavy taxation in Britain is also a factor in restricting trade and preventing both the expansion of oldestablished bus <s concerns and the starting of new ventures. There is no single remedy. But if one is disposed to be pessimistic about the figures for the period since March 26 of this year, showing a steady increase in the number of unemployed from 1,033,845 to 1,314,200, it is well to remember that they are offset by improved trade returns, and, large as they are, they are well over a million, less than those for 1921,