AN UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Not having completely mastered present-day economics, may I through the columns of the Spectator ventilate some aspects of a problem which is worrying me not a little at this time ? My " troubles " took definite shape some four years ago when, during a visit to the West of Canada, a message reached me from a Local Authority on the Clydeside (Glasgow) asking if the Salvation Army could place some twenty odd able-bodied men (several of them married) who were, and had been for some time, out of work. The men had been engaged in the shipbuilding industry, and inquiry disclosed the fact that their unemployment had arisen from the restric- tion in warship building which followed the signing of the Washington Treaty some three years previously (in 1922). I was then led to wonder if the statesmen who were parties to the Treaty saw the possibility—and shall I say the certainty— of such reactions ?
Perhaps the Right Hon. J. H. Thomas will take the neces- sary—and long—view when, with his special Unemployment Committee, he comes to grips with this most baffling problem. In that case it may be that the Income Tax payers of the present generation will get no relief ! There was no apparent economic hiatus in Isaiah's vision. He saw the sword and the spear being beaten into the ploughshare and the pruning- (Commissioner, the Salvation Army). Migration and Settlement, Shipping, and Railway Offices. Migration House, 3 Upper Thames Street, E.C. 4.
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