The Dominion FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1928. IN THE “BLACK BELT"

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 80, 28 December 1928, Page 8

The Dominion FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1928. IN THE “BLACK BELT"

With his characteristic instinct for doing the right thing at the right time, and in the right way, the Prince of Wales on Christmas night lent the great weight of his personal influence to a radio appeal on behalf of the distressed miners’ families in what he described “the Black Belt of Unemployment.” His Highness told his vast audience of listeners-in of “the ragged children, the hopeless mothers, of fathers, once intelligent workers, who had now been reduced to idleness and misery.” “Before I go from you to-night.” speaking with deep earnestness, “I make one practical suggestion. It is that no Christmas gathering break up without a concrete effort to muster help. ... I do not appear in the nature of a wet blanket, but I do ask you to think for a moment of the sufferers.” Two great crises have lain like a dark shadow over the Christmas festivities in the Homeland. One is the illness of the King. The other, the appalling misery and wretchedness in the distressed mining districts. Each has claimed the nation’s profound attention and anxiety. The King’s condition, happily, shows more hopeful signs, though it may yet be too soon for complete confidence. From this family crisis of supreme gravity the Prince has now gone to the nation for help in a public crisis, and focused its attention upon a social ill, the treatment of which is a problem of almost baffling difficulty. “The experience of the past eight years,” declared the London Times in a notable leading article on the subject of unemployment, “has time and again falsified hopes that the industrial depression would quickly right itself, as industrial depressions have done in the past, and has shaken the confidence of all members that it will yield to anything Parliament may do.” Remarking that “it is undoubtedly a blessing that every trace of a facile optimism has disappeared from the House of Commons,” The Times adds, that “humility is a not unpromising prelude to success.” The relief of the distressed miners is, of course, an immediate task, the nature of which is obvious—prompt assistance from the nation and the Government. The condition of these workers, how- ■ ever, is part of the large question of unemployment. The British Government has matured plans for draining off at least 45,000 persons from the derelict areas during the next few months. It is clear, however, that a- scheme of this magnitude means a large measure of industrial co-operation, and the co-operation of the overseas Dominions, where unemployment already exists to a greater or less degree.

at their maximum success they must be regarded as P. a la *- lve measures. . The crux of the problem remains untouched, u k e P u t s it, “Two years of industrial peace cannot undo the harm of five years of concealed or open industrial warfare Ihe peace must be cemented, as it can be, by conferences between employers _ organisations and the Trades Union Council.” In other words, it is upon industry itself that the task of curing the ills that afflict it must fall.

Statesmanship in industry has been rather lacking. But there are signs in Britain that it is being developed under the stress of circumstance.