20 OCTOBER 1923, Page 2

The E.50,000,000 mentioned by Sir Montague Barlow, of course, sounds

a nice round sum, but it is desirable, if not necessary, to point out that a large part of this sum would have been spent in any case. For instance, the expenditure of the Roads Board and of the great Railway Companies would, for the most part, have been incurred if there had' been no unemployment problem at all. The figure of unemployment is still unhappily rising. The week before last it rose by over five thousand, and on October 8th there were 1,251,600 unemployed on the live registers. The highest point was reached on June 24th, 1921, when there were 2,044,655. * *