A MIDDLE COURSE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 143, 20 June 1925, Page 16

A MIDDLE COURSE

LABOUR MINISTER. AND WAGES DISPARITY. •'•

Speaking in London recently, Sir Arthur Stcel-MaiUand,. Minister of Labour, said the greater part of his time was filled up in trying to steer a decent, sensible middle course between tho people, on tho one hand, who said to him:." Why on-earth cannot you abolish the dole to-morrow?" atid people, on the other extreme, who said, " Don't commit, blasphemy by calling it- a. dole.: Give it to everybody." It was amazing the way in which in unsheltered trades there Had been an increase in wages during the war which had never been reduced. again, according to the fall in the cost of livm<* since the war, as contrasted with what had occurred in sheltered trades. To my mind, said Sir Arthur, it is a miserable spectacle to see a highly skilled and highly trained engineer getting wages much less than many entirely nnskilted employees of a municipal corporation. (Hear, hear.) He declared that from half to three-qiinrters of a million peoplo were out of employment because of the full in our exports. The sooner they gut houses- quickly, whether brick or steel, quite apart from housing the population the sooner they would get an improvement in trade by enabling peoplo to move freely to and fro. No Government, said Sir Arthur, could ever euro unemployment, and if it was honest it would never profess to do so. The best

;i Liovernment could over do was to try sun! smooth the way for masters and men. and not ynit obstacles in the wav Wear,, hour.) *'

bir Arthur, speaking of tho. methods of trade unions, said they were totally unfitted for modern conditions of industry but if they, were going to abolish them they hud (.o. look at it from Mm'workers' point of view, and see- that they had some other safeguard to take its place. If they could really set tree capacity lor work of men and master?, },c had „',-, four ;<:•) to what >viiiild happen «a rcgai-da the expansion oi trade,