DEPRESSED AREAS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18596, 5 January 1935, Page 12

DEPRESSED AREAS

GOVERNMENT TO HELP

POWERS OF COMMISSIONS

LONDON. Nov. 15,

The Government to-day held out a new hand and new hope to the distressed areas of South Wa.les, Northern England and the Clydeside, which recovery has passed by. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that two special commissions will be established. As the House of Commons listened in keenest sympathy he declared that they would devote their whole time and attention to the initiation and organisation of new work schemes in those great districts ol growing despair. One commission will devote itself to those districts in England and Wales were depression continues ; the other to Scotland.

Mr. Percy Malcolm Stewart, managing director of the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, will head the English commission. Sir Archibald Bose, chairman of the management committee of the Edinburgh Savings Banks, will head the Scottish. Both chairmen will serve voluntarily

FUND OF £2,000,000

. A fund of £2,0G0,0C0 will be provided out of public revenues in the current year to finance the commissions' activities.

"The commissions," said the Chancellor, "arc to be given the widest possible authority." They were not to be afraid of experimenting!, he said, even if a particular experiment should fail. With a view to land settlement, they would be given power to acquire land, to hold or sell it, or to transfer it to municipalities. lie suggested the commissions, might follow these, lines :

Take particular interest in derelict districts and employ local labor to plan anew, making them more attractive and thus giving increased incentive to new industries to move there; carry out further work in occupational centres. Encourage agricultural holdings, including co-operative holdings. The Chancellor admitted that while within -the last two years industry generally had moved towards the light, these depressed areas were still in the shadow. Periods of long, enforced idleness in these areas were the most outstanding features in the whole of their tragic story. While most parts of the country had a feeling of hope and confidence, there remained in the depressed areas an atmosphere of stagnation and listlessness which arose from a chronic condition of poverty and privation, he concluded. The appointment of the commissions and granting of funds followed swiftly on the heels of the report of a commission which investigated conditions in the depressed areas for a considerable time.