THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18320, 2 November 1921, Page 9

THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

MR HOPKINSON’S EXAMPLE. LONDON, October 31. Mr Arthur Hopkinson was surrounded by unemployed in the streets at Ashton-under-Lyne. He refused to discuss the unemployment problem unless his auditors were bona fide Trades Unionists. He said he had no time for Communists and spongers on the community. All had to make sacrifices to bring back trade. He had lowered his standard of living to the limit that he had even given up his pipe, which was hard to do. He knowe how hard it was for genuine unemployeds to see other swanking in motor cars. It was cabled in March last that Mr. Hopkinsan, who is a member of the House of Commons, had presented a £30,000 mansion, also thirty houses, to the Audenshaw Council in order to live in a barn, and had disposed of most of his furniture and other possessions at nominal prices and by free gifts. He gave a motor car to his own chauffeur, and now pays taxi fares when he rides. Mr Hopkinson is the son of a Manchester professor, and is a successful engineering employer. He hopes that others will imitate his example, believing that willingness to show selfsacrifice will re-establish goodwill and confidence between masters and men. He has already established a profit-sharing scheme, by which his own profits diminish as the output increases, and could conceivably disappear altogether. He served as an officers in the war, was discharged as I unfit, and then rejoined as a private.