PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 7 April 1934, Page 12

PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

i j WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS j What the world needed at the present time, said Sir Edward Grigg, M.P. in a speech to the British Union 1 of Manufacturers, was rather more ! steadiness and common sense and rather less'excitement and politics. The one thing that Britain and the world needed above everything else was political stability. They wanted , to be sure that policies once adopted would not be suddenly changed. The political instability of England since tire war was utterly unlike anything in her recent history. Statesmen must find th e cause and remedy it, if they i could. There was no doubt about the cause. It was unemployment —not merely the awful incieasc of unemployment which followed the fall of world prices in 1929, but the hard cope of unemployment which had been • with them ever since the war. Even, in the present year, when things were ■ steadily, improving, over (>,000,000 or nearly half the total in insured trades, had at one time or another 6 drawn unemployment relief. Far too large a proportion of the steady working men and women were living precariously, always uncertain of their jobs, often compelled against their will to claim relief. That was why the country had ben so restless of recent , years. To remedy the unemployment, which had been chronic for 15 years, they must find the 1 cause. There was no doubt that the cause was the loss of markets for the export trades, combined with a complete stoppage of new settlement on the land. They must face the fact that some proporL tion of tho markets, particularly in ( Asia, was lost for good. There was only one course for statesmen to pursue, and that was to build un new markets in their stead, by settling more men on the land, both in Britain and oversea. They should not pay doles to the miners and agricultural labourers, who formed a large proportion of the permanently unemployed; they should give them, who were thoroughly suited for it, the opportunity of settling mi the land. They should not spend public money to produce more commodities of which, in the Empire alone, to say nothing of foreign countries, there was already more than enough.