The Skeleton Cunarder There is something that catches the imagination
in the act of the correspondent of a London daily paper who wrote enclosing El as nucleus of a fund to enable work on the abandoned Cunarder to be restarted. The suggestion has not been adopted, though a number of other subscriptions have been received. But the idea is less visionary than it sounds. If close on 13,000,000 can be raised in an Irish sweepstake on the strength of no better motive than the chance of a windfall, what is there fantastic in the proposal to raise perhaps half that sum to enable 3,000 men in the shipyard, and three or four times as many indirectly dependent on them, to carry on with a great constructive work instead of being thrown on the dole? The Japanese battleship, Mutsu,' was built out of public subscriptions. The real trouble about the Cunarder is the doubt whether, if she is com- pleted, she can earn her keep in these days when the transatlantic traffic has grown so lean. But to leave the ship half-completed on the stocks must be the least economic course of all. Unemployment pay to the 3,000 displaced workers at the reasonable average of /1 per week per head amounts to over 1150,000 a year, sufficient to pay interest at five per cent. on a loan of /3,000,000. Is it really better to pay the money as dole than to pay it to enable the work to be completed ? The Government will have something to answer for if it takes that view.
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