BREWERIES AND LABOR.

Evening Star, Issue 19003, 27 July 1925, Page 2

BREWERIES AND LABOR.

TO THE EHITOII. Sir,—! belong to tlio Labor Party. Will you bo good enough to inform me ami your readers if the recent junalgalion of breweries is likely to increase labor, to cheapen beer for us workers, to brew more of it, to make more profits and less taxation, or what it was formed for? I have been reading an article sent mo on 1 Labor,’ written by R. T. Jones, director of the United Stales employment service. He says, writing of unemployment, that in 1921 there were approximately 5,000,000 unemployed, and that then it would have f.bocn worse but for Prohibition, the capital transferred from the liquor trade,to other trades giving employment to three or four times as many workers as were formerly employed in 'the liquor trade, and that it required about OjOOOdol investment to employ one wage-earner in the liquor trade, while it requires only l,Boodol to employ one wage-earner in’ average other lines. In _ iron and steel it only required capital of about l,ooodol to employ 600, in leather products 450, printing about the same, while the same amount employed in liquor would find work for but seventy-seven. Thus at a glance one can see the value of the brewing industry to the American labor market. If these figures were applied to New Zealand industries, would the result he approximately the same?—l am, etc., Worker.