UNEMPLOYMENT

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 5

UNEMPLOYMENT

THE PROBLEM IN BRITAIN

DONATIONS CRITICISED AND DEFENDED.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.) (AtJSTRAIIAN-NBW ZEALAND ' CAWB ASSOCIATION.) „ (Received May 3, 10 a.m.) LONDON, Ist May. Continuing the debate on unemployment in the House of Commons, Mr. J. B. Clyn.es said that though the unemployment donation could be justified as a- temporary expedient, it could not be maintained in order to preserve industeial peace. Labour was anxious owing to the Government's failure to provide employment, and there might be a serious position next -winter unless something were done. He deplored the fact that Sir R. S. Home (Minister for Labour) _ had not hinted at an alternative policy to donations, and he urged the Government to explain why the blockade "was being maintained;, contending that it was a blockade of ourselves, causing unemployment and checking industrial expansion. Sir F. G. Banbury urged' the stoppage of the donations at an early date, except for ex-soldiers' donations. They were, he said, ruinous and demoralising. Mr. G. Wardle, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour, in reply, said that reports of abuses of the donations were greatly exaggerated, but the Government was taking the necessary steps to check them. The present system of donations to civilians would end on 24th November. The donations had proved an insurance against Bolshevism and had been a profound 'relief to hundreds of thousands of people who had been faced with the spectre of unemployment.