UNEMPLOYMENT EVIL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 30 May 1930, Page 9

UNEMPLOYMENT EVIL

SUGGESTED SAFEGUARDS

DEBATE IN COMMONS

British Official Wireless.

KUGBY, 28th Slay,

The debate on unemployment in the House iof Commons was opened by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, the \ Conservative Leader, who declared that anything less drastic than safeguarding of industries duties would not meet the case. He agreed that high tariffs were a bar to business, but they icould not get those tariffs reduced while tho British market was tho dumping ground to which all cheap goods could bo sent. The safeguarding of home markets was an essential basis for tho development of markets within tho Empire, and a reduction in foreign tariffs had resulted from bargaining between one protected country and another.

Mr. MaeD.onald, Prime Minister, declared that in countries under protection unemployment figures had mounted more rapidly than was. the case lure. Twelve mouths ago the problem was one of home conditions in relation to normal foreign markets. That was not tho problem to-day. Let them take any industrial country, and it would be found iliat world causes had knocked the bottom out of prices, and every country dependent on export trade had suffered. He instanced Germany, where unemployment figures had risen from 1,700,000 to 2,700,000, and tho. United States, which a year ago had practically no unemployed, and where there were now between five and six million.

They were facing a totally new problem, and tho Lord Privy Seal, Mr. J.< H. Thomas, had done an enormous amount of work to relieve the situation. He detailed some of the schemes put in hand, and asked if they could not in the face of the special growth of unemployment undertake emergency measures to tide over a period which every authority which had been consulted agreed was temporary. As soon as confidence was re-established orders now withhold would be placed, and they were just as likely to have a period of immediate boom. In the provision of !arge schemes ■municipalities were hold up sometimes by technical difficulties, and ho asked, if the parties in the House of. Commons could not join in measures to expedite such work. Municipalities also might be encouraged to do moro than at present,.and the Government proposed to summon a! conference of representatives of municipal authorities. Tho question of unemployment might well become the subject for co-operative action.