The Private-car Show.
Page 1
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
This journal, in conformity with the express desires of the promoters of the forthcoming exhibition at Olympia, at which only private cars and accessories .hereto will be on show, does not purpose to make any special references to the contents of the great building at Olympia in this or any early issues. Our Olympia report win, as heretofore, be confined LC,' the commercial motor exhibition at the end of March next, when our supporters can rest assured that" THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR" text and illustratioos will be fully up to the standards of excellence which have characterised the corresponding pages in past. years.
Road Making and Unemployment.
The problem of unemployment, even at this early period of a mild fall, has been forcing itself upon public attention, both in London and the Provinces, for some weeks past. Public bodies throughout the country are occupied in the devising of schemes which shall not be of an unproductive character, in which matter they arc certainly well advised, having regard to the fact that even the man who is starving objects to putting forth labour which is no part of a useful scheme. We may cite the case of a benevolent man in the north of England who, many winters ago, in order to give employment to some hundreds of starving people, let them carry all the stone in his quarry from one end to the other, then back again, and so on. The men refused to work after the first four days.
We are strongly of opinion that no more useful scheme presents itself, qua a likely solution of this difficult problem of the prompt alleviation of the sufferings which are due to unemployment, than the undertaking of constructional and improvement works in connection with roads. The City Engineer of Liverpool, Mr. John A. Brodie, as we reported in our issue of the 241h ultimo (page so ante) is working upon these lines, with the full support of the Liverpool City Council, but this is only a single instance, and one for which there ought to be hundreds of parallels. The suggestion is no new one, at least so far as this journal is concerned, for
it was advanced by us as long ago as the early winter of 1905-1906, on which occasion we were somewhat severely, though not unkindly, taken to task by one of our technical contemporaries for having put forward what it was pleased to class as " a ridiculous idea." The idea is by no means ridiculous, provided the unskilled labour is properly directed, whilst the benefits which are to be derived from any considerable extension of its practical application do not need 1:1 be recited.