LIGHT AHEAD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 11 January 1926, Page 9

LIGHT AHEAD.

IN BRITAIN’S TRADE CRISIS. TURNS TO NEW INDUSTRIES. UNEMPLOYMENT DECREASE. In the smoky midlands like Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton are busy changing their old industries for new (says an English correspondent). With the traditional industries, such as steel, almost at a .standstill as a result of the post-war slump with its high cost of production and lack of foreign markets, the cities are making an intensive effort to recoup by the development of comparatively new trades, such as the production of motor cars.

The centre of the motor car industry is Birmingham, which already is becoming something like an English Detroit. Such motor companies as Austin, Wojseley, Lancaster, Armstrong, Siddesley and Sunbeam are thriving. Significant of the change is the transformation of the great Birmingham Small Arms Company, historic manufacturers of firearms, into a new subsidiary organisation to build the automobiles. The company is exchanging the manufacture of shot guns for the manufacture of motors, and is building its own small cars, designed to compete with the flivvers, as well as bicycles and motor cycles of all descriptions. It has assumed control of Daimlers, one of the bestknown English cars. Likewise Dunlop, the great rubber firm, with a new factorv at Birmingham, is concentrating all attention on tyres and motor accessories. This transformation already has produced results of the highest significance in the new industrial health of England. Unemployment in Birmingham lias been decreased by 50,000 during tlie past year.

The new industries .have absorbed so manv unemployed in Birmingham that here, for the first time in seven years, no unemployment relief is necessary this winter. Under-employment at Wolverhampton and neighbouring towns now has been reduced below the prewn>- level.

Birmingham was Mastered from end to en/ 1 recently with signs reading “Buy British-made goods.” This is the first" gnn in the industrial campaign Manned to culminate in February with tlm British industries fair. The new industries are becoming r>rosr>e<- o us. but it must- be remembered that Birmingham’s traditional steel industries. once the largest in the world, are still in a very bad shape.