On Monday the Secretary of State for the Dominions announced
the appointment of a mission of four, Sir Harry McGowan, Sir Hugo Hirst, Sir Ernest Clark and Mr. Dougal Malcolm, who will go to Australia in August for about six months to confer with the Governments and others there upon trade between us and them and upon emigration. The Consolidated Fund was after- wards taken, and Mr. MacDonald raised the subject of aistressed areas, particularly, of course, the South Wales Coalfield, thOnkh it was later asserted that the plight of Durham was worse. The one satisfactory feature of the debate was that the temperateness of the speeches indicated that the seriousness of the suffering and the difficulty of the problem were recognized. Indeed, nothing could be more depressing than the spectacle of the coal industry declining and most of the speakers looking to the Government, not to the industry itself, to save it. Besides the suffering, the incidence of rating was fre- quently put forward as a drag upon the industry, and migration as one of the remedies. * *
