MANY UNEMPLOYED IN UNITED STATES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18888, 14 October 1929, Page 4

MANY UNEMPLOYED IN UNITED STATES.

DEMAND ONLY FOR SKILLED LABOUR. SAYS " UNION DELEGATE.

"Conditions in America are not as flourishing as they seem,”" Mr Robert F. Bell, overseas representative of the National Union of Seamen, told a reporter yesterday. There was, he said a demand only for skilled labour, as the unskilled market was over-crowded with emigrants from the Mediterranean countries and with negroes. Mr. Bell has been for some years stationed in the United States, and he .knows a good deal of the industrial situation there. There was a good deal of unemployment, he said, but. as no official statistics were available, it was not possible to gauge correctly the real position. If those statistics were collected, it would be found that America had a far bigger unemployment problem than England had An unofficial estimate, published recently, had given the unemployment figures as 4'000,000. However, spread over the 120,000,000 population, this did not seem as bad as it otherwise would.

To gain a good wage, a man had to be a specialist. The Italians, Greeks, and negroes had. largely covered the unskilled market. Austrians went to the mines, whilst the negroes had practically replaced white labour at the ports.

Wages, although high to all appear ances, reached only about the same standard as that ruling in Australia and New Zealand. Bricklayers, for instance, received about 14 dollars, or £3, a day, but the extremes of the climate gave them long periods of idle ness. Then, too, it required high rates of pay to compensate men for risking their lives on the tall buildings they were constructing. Unskilled workers, on the other hand, averaged only about 22 dollars a week.

Business activity was feverish The slogan everywhere adopted was “Never close.” Every day was the same to Americans. The building trades could not long keep up the pressure New York was already over-built, and thousands of offices were vacant. The excess profits tax had been responsible for a large amount of the activity in this direction, and many millions of dollars had been sunk in improvements and extensions to buildings.