Attention is being concentrated more and more on the man-power
problem, and it is very right that it should be. As the Chairman of • the Westminster Bank pointed out forcibly on Tuesday, unless we can produce—particularly coal—on a vastly increased scale economic disaster stares us in the face. We must have more producers, and each producer must produce more. But about the first there are difficulties. The army, it is suggested, is too large ; you can get men from there. But that, of course, depends on our military com- mitments. No figures have been published regarding this, though they clearly must be if the continuance of conscription is to be justified. There are 142,000 Poles, very few of them productively employed; and there is.„italk...ef, enlisting displaced persons from Germany and elsewhere. That sounds promising—except for the housing problem, and that is very nearly insoluble. There simply is not accommodation for imported labour ; and if it is argued that the men can be put up in camps or Nissen huts or something, the weather now prevailing is fit commentary on that. Finally there are the drones of the betting industry—anything up to 400,000 of them. But what form of compulsion are you to introduce to shift them to somewhere where they would justify their existence? That question may not be unanswerable, but the Government would find it pretty difficult to answer it in the practical form of a Bill.
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