OUT OF WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 16, 20 January 1931, Page 6

OUT OF WORK.

In Europe there are some eix and a half million people unemployed. The Prime Minister in the House of Commons the other day said that if the statistics of the United States of America were compiled on the same basis as those of Great Britain they would show that in America there were between ten and twelve millions with no work to do. Japan as long ago as last June estimated there were nearly half a million workless there. No figures are available for other countries in the Far East like China and India, both of whom support large industrial populations. Nor are any figures available for South America, where unemployment must he on the increase because of the political upheavals that have taken place within the last few months.

A very conservative estimate of world unemployment is twenty millions. The average worker hae two dependents. So there are sixty millions of people on short commons owing to the impossibility of obtaining work.

The- International Labour Office of the League of Nations is the source, from which these figures are drawn. There is no need to doubt their accuracy, for the office has always acted as a reliable world clearing house of information, a function that it possesses which ie frequently overlooked. In the "Note of the Week" in a recent minuber of ite weekly periodical, "Industrial and Labour Information," it is said that unemployment is steadily becoming more acute in almost every country in the world. Practically everywhere it is now the dominant industrial and social problem and is demanding the anxious attention of Governments and peoples.

A fact which the researches of the International Labour Office has brought out is that a fall in wholesale prices always increases unemployment. It would seem that the monetary factor is of particular importance among the causes of the crisis. The article closes on a slightly less depressed note than that on which it started. "While it would be unwise to attempt any forecast, it may be added that certain signs, such, for instance, as the fact that the United States price level is no longer falling or is falling only very slightly, suggest that the depression is nearing its lowest point; but unhappily there are hardly any signs yet of a recovery." —OLIVER BELL.