Unemployed Workers on the Continent

The apologists of capitalism in this country often aver that the workers here are better off than in other countries. A correspondent of The Times has recently been making a tour of France and Italy investigating the conditions of the workless there. In Italy most of the 1,200,000 unemployed belong to the Fascist party on account of the rations given to their unemployed members, and the correspondent remarks: “You will realise that the unemployed single men probably get more in actual relief than our own unemployed.” In France, the official figures show that more than half the unemployment is in Paris and the surrounding Department of the Seine. “In Paris, the unemployed single man gets from 10 to 12 francs minimum a day as dole, and if he is living in lodgings, the keeper of his house gets another four francs a day for his room. Multiplied by seven days each week, this makes, even with the exchange, an allowance considerably above our own.” But apart from such slight differences, capitalism is everywhere the same. It weeps at the large number of idle workers whom it cannot employ at a profit, while it grudgingly doles out the barest necessities of existence.

R. M.