Unemployment and poverty discussed at IDA meeting in Dublin

Dublin, 19 October 1921 – The unemployment crisis was discussed at a meeting of the Dublin branch of the Industrial Development Association (IDA) in the RDS this week.

Professor William Magginis, addressing the meeting, argued that every member of the community in Ireland was responsible for the problem of unemployment in the country when they did not buy Irish products.

Maud Walsh noted that getting a job was only the first step out of the problem of poverty. Ms Walsh pointed to wretched conditions of the tenement houses in Dublin, which she claimed were homes of the toilers in the economy and society, and alleged that they were proof of the callousness of Irish employers over the last century. It was in such conditions, she added, that the spirit of anarchy and Bolshevism was bred and for this reason there was a duty on the part of employers to reform.

According to figures recently released by the Ministry of Labour, the number of unemployed people for the week ending 8 October 1921 was 76,862, compared to 82,575 on 1 October and 84,976 on 24 September.

The breakdown of the 8 October figures showed that this overall figure comprised 57,164 men, 17,206 women, 1,426 boys and 1,066 girls. 52,245 of these were in receipt of unemployment benefits.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]