The Transfer of Labour The problems of the transference of
labour and industry which were discussed at the conference in the Gloucester Employment Exchange between local inthistrialists and Ministry of Labour officials this week were concerned with specific difficulties created by the expansion locally of the air- craft industry. Such problems are at last falling into some sort of perspective, and P.E.P.—the Political and Economic Planning group of investigators—has just produced in its series of studies on social and industrial questions a valuable and exhaustive report on this subject. It has examined the reasons for which industry finds itself estab- lished in specific localities; the facilities available and the financial difficulties involved. The industrial expansion of certain parts of the country is contrasted with the decay of others, and the need for a balanced regional development is stressed. Planning there must be, and the need for some official guidance—even in certain areas an official veto— becomes daily more insistent. Not least among present-day considerations is the importance of checking the accumu- lation of armament factories in the vicinity of London, or, for obvious strategic reasons, in any single centre. Germany has been careful to reduce that danger to a minimum.
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