Depressed Areas and Votes Parliament now disperses for a period
of months, leaving the country profoundly disturbed at the failure of the Government to grapple on any adequate scale with the appalling problem of the depressed areas. Mr. Baldwin received a deputation on the subject on Monday but appears to have had nothing beyond the old platitudes to offer it. So far as Members of the House of Commons are concerned self-interest coincides with genuine sympathy, for the inertia of the Government will cost Conservative Members for most constituencies in the special areas their seats. It is idle for the Cabinet to plume itself on the reduction of unemployment by something under a million when two million unemployed are left and roads are waiting to be built, villages to be given water supplies, railways to be electrified, migration schemes to be organized and land to be settled or planted with timber. Ministers are not always in the closest touch with public opinion, and there are numberless indications that such documents as Mr. Lloyd George's New Deal proposals, Mr. P. M. Stewart's report on the Distressed Areas and the volume The Next Five Years have aroused throughout the country a wholesome dis- content that may cost the Government dear when the Election comes. The Bishop of Winchester was fully justified in complaining in the House of Lords on Wednesday that in reply to a question as to what the .Government . was going . to do the Government simply recounted. what •it had done.
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