50 Years Ago

According to the Daily Chronicle (2 July 1929) there are 1,142,400 out of work, an increase of 24,593 on the previous month. The total on 1 July comprised 889,000 men, 28,300 boys, 199,500 women and 25,500 girls.

In the same paper, same date, same column, we also read under the subheading “Society Acrobats”:

The diverse activities of well-known people have been keeping the photographers exceptionally busy, according to this week’s issue of that bright review, the Sketch. Half the social world appears to have shipped over to Le Touquet for the golf tournament of Buck’s Club, while the other half were either at the Peterborough Foxhound Show or the extraordinary circus held in a West End mansion. Polo and a water party at Roehampton claimed many notable people, some of who are seen doing complicated ‘physical jerks’ on Major Paget’s lawn to time set by gramophone.

We are not killjoys, nor arc we much concerned with these antics about which the tripe journalists write so much trash. What we do object to is the humdrum existence we, like the rest of the workers, have to submit to because they do not understand the case and comfort possible for all if the present means of wealth production were commonly owned and utilised for that purpose.

(From an article by MacHaffie, Socialist Standard August 1929.)