UNEMPLOYMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 306, 24 November 1932, Page 7

UNEMPLOYMENT

BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S PLANS. POSSIBLE NEAV ANGLE. A DETERMINED PROGRAMME. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, Nov. 23. It is understood from the King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament and the Prime Minister’s statement in the House of Commons that the Government is tackling unemployment from a new angle. Hitherto the question has been associated with falling world trade, the socalled economic blizzard, and the temporary collapse of basic industries, and it has been assumed that the unemployed would be absorbed when better times came. The Government appears to have realised that a large amount of unemployment is destined to be permanent owing to the vast daily displacements due to unceasing extensions of machinery, the cessation of migration and overmanning in many industries, For example, coal displacements are due to reductions in armaments and warship construction and not least to the post-war invasion by women in tho labour market, practically doubling the total supply of labour. „ Mr Ramsay MacDonald stated that even when trade was as busy as anyono could expect it to become there would be a residium of population which, if not human beings, might be described as scrap. Tho Government is determined not to allow this residium, which Mr MacDonald says will perhaps amount to 2,000,000 men and women, to become “superfluous scrap.” It, therefore, regards the problem of unemployment as not a matter of temporary relief. Mr Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, previously mentioned the figure of 1,000,000 as possibly permanently unemployed. The Archbishop of Canterbury said it was a shock to him to learn this from the Chancellor. “It is surely impossible that wo will acquiesce in such a permanent burden on the social life of the nation,” he said. The newspapers foreshadow . vast Government plans to help the unemployed. It has been decided to divide the country into areas each with an organiser to provide work in centres, allotments, physical training, and educational facilities, and to settle youth on tho land.