THE PRINCE’S APPEAL,

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18879, 24 February 1933, Page 4

THE PRINCE’S APPEAL,

The Prince of Wales gave one more proof of his warm interest in the welfare of the worker by his broadcast in England last month, introducing a new series of weekly wireless talks on unemployment. Their purpose is to make a strong appeal to all men and women of good will for aid in combating distress and providing work, and to suggest practical lines for such help. It is true that there are now hopeful indications of a change for the better in the industrial position in Britain. The marked decrease in unemployed in the returns published during a recent week was particularly welcome, as anxiety had been aroused by the rise of 52,800 in the previous return. The effect of the tariff is apparently being felt, and this factor should be more helpful in the immediate future in providing increasing employment. There is, however, very little doubt that the well-known political and economic causes of the present depression are being aggravated by another factor. As the Prime Minister has just pointed out, machines are supplanting men. They are doing it on a disquieting scale in almost every department of trade and manufacture. An examination of 30 British industries showed that between 1913 and 1928 production had increased by 2.7.3 per cent., whereas the number of people they employed rose only by 2 per cent. Moreover, there was an important group of trades in which there was a marked increase in production accompanied by a marked decrease in the number of employees. This process has received great attention during the last few months in the United States, where the enormous number of unemployed is ascribed by experts to the almost unlimited capacity of the latest machinery. Thus all the bricks that America could consume can now he turned out by a hundred men working a small number of plants. __________________