GRIM SPECTRE OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

GRIM SPECTRE OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

Serious Position in England

COTTON OPERATIVES HARD HIT. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright,) (Received February 21, 8.2 p.m.) LONDON, February 20. Not since the war has the grim spectre of unemployment been so prevalent in England. Lancashire is now facing the darkest hour in its industrial history, and week by week unemployment is growing apace. Roughly a quarter of a million Lancashire cotton operatives are out of work. The weaving section is in a worse state of poverty than ever before, suffering an undreamed of heyday. Hundreds of homes are within a hair’s breadth of ruin, and people are living from hand to mouth, tl|pugh naturally amid the despondency and gloom there is a lingering hope that a re-organisation of the whole trade will restore better times. The women are the heaviest sufferers. They find themselves discarded by a trade in which they work with real pride. The weavers’ average weekly wage for months past has been less than 30/-. In order to make a decent living, wives have gone to work alongside of their husbands. To-day they have been robbed of that opportunity, and real poverty is prevailing among thousands of midle aged spinsters, who have worked in the mills all their lives. The extent of the unemployment is gained from the fact that in Nelson, a typical weaving town of 15,000 operatives, this week there are four thousand out of work, and this number is growing weekly. In addition to this, the fewest mills are working anything like full time.