THE PRINCE AT TYNESIDE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
have lately conducted the Prince of Wales on his two days' visit to Tyneside, where he was making a study of our Social Service activities. Nursery Schools, Welfare Centres, Centres for Unemployed Men, Building Trust Properties, Boys' and Girls' Clubs were all included in his programme, and we finished up a memorable experience by a great meeting in the City Hall.
At one centre that he visited, some 500 unemployed work- men were there to meet him. "Can nothing be done," be inquired, " to get these men back to work ? There is something wrong with society so long as people who want work cannot find it." "How do they manage to keep so decently dressed ?" he asked, and was stirred when he learned that they Were
probably wearing the only suit of clothes that many of them possessed: The Boys' and Girls' Clubs and our Housing Trust (which pays 4 per cent, to its investors and yet manages to charge an economic rent that is lewer than that levied by the Muni- cipality, and is provided at 1:50 per family as against 1120 in Corporation houses) interested him greatly. He saw, in contrast, some of our Slum tenements, and 'said, ".No one ought to live under such conditions. It is an iniquity that they exist at all." The burden of distress that he saw on all sides he seemed to regard as a personal challenge to himself.
He possesses an extraordinary fund of nervous energy, for each day he began his work before ten, and Was busy with visits, meetings and conferences till one the next morning, breaking his day only for three hours in the afternoon for a strenuous game of golf. There was nothing perfunctory in anything that he did.
The Monarchy is safe in Great Britain while men of his calibre occupy this great position of trust, and the thousands. who turned out to see him must have sent him away with the feeling that he has a place of very deep affection in the hearts of his future subjects:—I aid, Sir, &e.;
Neiceastle-on:Tipie.
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