Emigration would be an excellent proposal if the Government would pay the fares—starving men out of work can't pay them—and see the men had a@ chance of making good in the colonies. This the Government has not offered to do.
Short time equalizes the burden by sharing it out more, but it also tends to increase it by depressing the normal purchasing power of the workers involved and eveating thereby a lessened demand for goods manufactured for the home market. Its recommendation by the Government has served further to increase the distr of the workers, who were being told that ow salvation lay entirely in "more production" only a month or two ago.
Only a very small proportion of the unemployed, who are largely cotton operatives, weavers and mechanics, can_ be employed in road making. Its adoption on a large scale is unlikely and its effect on the numbers employed negligible. The Board of Trade returns recently gave the number of vacancies in the building trades as just over 6,000. The Government has asked the building trades unions to train 50,000 ex-service men to fill these vacancies. By the largest majority ever recorded in a union ballot, the builders, who are largely ex-servicemen themselves have refused. No trade unionist blames them, their consent would have meant Jow wages, long hours and much future unemployment in that. trade.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.