Manawatu Daily Times

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6955, 8 July 1929, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times

New Cure For Unemployment The British Labour Government is once again looking Empire-wards for a solution of the baffling unemployment problem, and Mr. J. H. Thomas, the Minister in charge, declares that £1,000,000 has been set aside each year for the development of the non-self-governing colonics. Here is a new and bolder solution of the problem, and one which has possibilities of great development. Despite the expenditure of vast sums in relief measures there are still about a million and a-half unemployed in the Old Country, and it would appear that a continuance of the present policy will fail to bi’ing the problem of unemployment any nearer solution. With the growth of population in the self-governing dominions trade with Britain is bound to increase, but that development will be too slow to be of any immediate benefit to the workers in the Old Land. On the other hand, the territories under the direction of -the Secretary of State for the Colonics, including properly so-called colonies such as Jamaica and Ceylon, protectorates like Uganda and Nyasaland, mandated territories, and the Sudan, have resources that ■would respond at once to the expenditure of British money. Moreover, there does not appear to be any possibility of manufacturing industries in them developing on any competitive scale for many years to come. The wonderful possibilities" of development in these territories can best be realised in terms of trade growth, during the last twenty-five years, in the production of introduced or indigenous crops. In 1901 cocoa exported from the Gold Coast and Nigeria was valued at £70,000; in 1924 it was £8,230,000. Palm kernels and palm oil from the same places in 1900 was valued at £2,196,000; in 1924 it was £8,405,000. In 1901 there was no cotton from the Uganda Protectorate; in 1924 the value of this export was £3,485,000. Coffee from Kenya in 1913 was worth £62,000, and in 1924 was valued at £636,000; while the value of tea exported from Ceylon rose from £3,174,000 in 1901 to £14,331,000 in 1923. It is estimated that our tropical colonies produce threequarters of the world’s supply of cocoa, a substantial part of its supply of vegetable oils, the chief part of cultivated rubber, about one-fifth of the world’s supply of tea. And while there is an increase recorded in the production of coffee, tobacco and cotton in tropical parts of the Colonial Empire, it is disappointingly small when compared with the results achieved by other nations. The possibilities of growing cotton in our dependencies in Central Afi'ica and in Northern Nigeria have not been explored, while British Guiana, with enormous potentialities for growing crops of all kinds, is languishing because there is no money for development-..

At a meeting of tlie committee of the Manawatu Hunt on Saturday night, it was dpeiSed .to hold the annual stceplechaeo meeting at Feilding on W September 18th.

The Maunganui has arrived at San Francisco and th oMataroa at Colon, The Niagara has sailed from Honolulu and the ltimutaka from Southampton (says a London cable).