THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1908. TRADE DEPRESSION AT HOME.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9189, 11 September 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1908. TRADE DEPRESSION AT HOME.

The cablegram from London the other day, which stated that ten thousand men were out of work in Birmingham, is another proof of the severity of the trade depression that has been experienced at Home during the last few months. When the last mail left London anxiety as to the prospects of the coming winter was deepening, and each day reports from the industrial centres confirmed the opinion of those who took the gloomiest view of the future. In the shipping ports the number of vessels that were laid up was increasing daily. Three hundred thousand tons of shipping: lay idle in the Tyne, and the Mersey Docks were reported to be "full of laid-up vessels," while, as a consequence, thousands of sailors and dock labourers, and hundreds of ships' officers, were out of work. The President of the North of England Iron ?and Steel

Trades Conciliation Board said at a meeting of the members that he could not remember anything like the state of things in the trade for forty years except in 1886. They had lost no fewer than a thousand members owing to the slackness of trade. In Manchester, owing to the slump in the engineering and build ing trades, there were 15,000 unemployed, and in the cotton trade matters were approaching the stage, which has since been reached, when a reduction of wages would be necessary. The refusal of the operatives to accept the reduction means, no doubt, the closing down of the mills, and a large addition to the army of the workles*. One of the most serious features of the situation was pointed out by Dr. Arthur Shadwell, in a letter to the London "Times." "The unemployed question," he said, "is becoming a chronic one. It used to be exceptional. We did not have unemployed formerly except when trade depression was exceptionally acute; now we in Englan 1 have it continuously, either acute or mild, although we have passed through an era of unprecedented prosperity. We are on the edge of acute depression."