Signs of Life

In Lancashire hundreds of thankful people went off the dole and back to work last week. Two cotton mills, long closed, opened; a third that had been operating on a 48-hr, week, changed to a 55-hr, week for at least the next ten weeks. In Britain as a whole the total unemployment figure (2,825,000) had dropped 60,000 in the past fortnight. Economists were not overexcited. Just as they had prophesied when Britain went off the gold standard (TIME, Sept. 28), trade has revived because British goods are cheaper, more attractive to foreign buyers. Another stimulus to the British cotton industry, unforeseen six weeks ago, was the Chinese boycott of Japanese goods, helping Britain in China just as the Indian boycott of British goods helped Japan in India.

Artificial though it might be, the revival of trade gave hard working little Jim Thomas, onetime Minister for Unemployment, something to make campaign speeches about.

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