THE WORKLESS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 301, 14 September 1908, Page 7

THE WORKLESS.

TRADE SLACK AND WINTER COMING. / ' ' 1 UNIONIST DEMAND. LARGER' GOVERNMENT GRANTS. {BY TELECEAPS—rHESS ASSOCIATION— CoriRIGHT.) London, September 11. ■ Tho Trade Union Congress at Nottingham , .demanded' drastic legislation on the question ,of the unemployed. - A resolution was passed demanding that larger grants should bo made for public works, so that employment would be provided for the unemployed. Several; speakers warned tho Government ' ,of tho danger; of violence in the coming winter. GLASGOW DEPRESSION. RELIEF SCHEMES. ' London, September 11. The .corporation of Glasgow has purchased 170 acres to provide work for the unemployed. The Liverpool corporation is taking similar action. STATE AND MUNICIPAL RELIEF. " SPEECH BY MR. BURNS. A number of municipalities at Home own and (develop rural areas, chiefly for the, employment of the -workless or reproductive or partially reproductive work, and also in some cases for reforestation purposes. Last year eight afforestation schemes were being carried out by local Authorities. Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Bradford,'and,Manchester were all developing forest land. 1- ' Under the 'Unemployed Workmen Act, recently renewed, the British Government has power to ;6pend' an annual grant of ,£200,000 in jrejief of distress. The President of the Local Government Beard (Mr. John Burns) argues that an indiscriminate expenditure of relief •moneys would tend to increase the already too large proportion of casual labour. Mr. Burns .considers .State- grants merely a palliative; he prefers old age pensions, housing, licensing legislation, etc., as effective .remedies. Speaking in the House of Commons on July 29, Mr. Burns sajd he : could not "administer ,the : unemployed grants so as to satisfy a nuinJjer'of sentimentalists who, if they had control ,of the work, would give most of the money to their own district and to the wrong people, with disastrous results. (Laughter.) 1 shall Approach winter without gloomy expectations. I am not going to be driven into foolish pction at the instance of panic-niongers and people who put forward certain economic ideas pnd' do not hesitate to us 6 the unemployed for their own purposes. I intend to face the winter ■with a golden heart, but without a head of .quicksilvcr." . The House, added Mr. Burns, (could rely upon his' fac'litating every loan which would throw work into the winter pionths, subject of course to good finance." The "Daily Mail" quotes the following remarks by Dr. A. Shadwell, of Burnham: "My ppinion is that the coming winter will be a ■very bad one indeed. The good time ib over. (Certain large trades are particularly depressed. ~ . ._ There is not equal depression in all industries; but the unemployed question is becoming a clironje one. It used to bo exceptional. We did riot have unemployed formerly except'when trade depression was''exceptionally pcute; now we '.in England have it .continuously, either'acute or mild, although we have passed through an era of unprecedented prosperity. .We are on the edge of acuta depression. •• "Unemployment,; of. course, exists in other Countries, and at times in an acute form, but it is not chronic.in other countries. It is never so acute as here, and they get over an acute period quicker. 1 witnessed the last jieriod of 'acute distress in' the winter of 1902-3. I went ajl through the industrial districts both in England and ' Germany, and the depression was pqual in both, but there was a marked difference in the effects. The depression in Germany did notcause anything like the distress that it did "here," and .while the .depression had com-pletdjfc-disapp.eared.-.in: Germany .in. a year, it took three. Jtars to'pass away here." I