HC Deb 29 October 1908 vol 195 cc497-8
MR. HADDOCK (Lancashire, North Lonsdale)

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will state the basis of his calculation that in America there were 4,000,000 unemployed workmen; and will he say what was the number similarly unemployed in the United Kingdom.

MR. JOHN BURNS

The statement that there were 4,000,000 unemployed workmen in America was not founded upon any calculation of my own. It is stated in The Times of the 2nd instant, that the number cannot now be less than 3,000,000 to 4,000,000, and I understand that in reports presented to the Civic Convention in New York in April last the number of unemployed mechanics and labourers (excluding farm labourers) was given as 4,750,000. It is not possible to estimate the number of unemployed in the United Kingdom with any degree of accuracy.

EARL WINTERTON (Sussex, Horsham)

Is it not even more difficult to estimate the number of unemployed in the United States with any degree of accuracy?

MR. JOHN BURNS

It was until recently when the New York State decided upon establishing a new method of calculation.

EARL WINTERTON

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that New York is only one of some thirty odd States?

MR. JOHN BURNS

replied that New York State was universally taken by statisticians, for figures and deductions therefrom, as a standard State, and if the noble Lord would see the later reports to the New York Department he would find his statement confirmed.

MR. HUNT

inquired whether the great difference between the two countries was that the unemployed in America had money in their pockets, while here they had not.

MR. JOHN BURNS

said he happened to have visited America three times, and had seen the unemployed in both countries. The only difference he could detect, apart from numbers, was that the unemployed in America, for a short time after losing work, were better dressed, and many did not drink so much as some of his fellow countrymen. [LABOUR cries of "Oh" and "It is not true."] In point of number of days idle, the advantage was with the British workman.

MR. O'GRADY

It is a shameful comparison.

AN HON. MEMBER

A perfectly true one, though.