NUMBERS AND PERCENTAGES UNEMPLOYED. BOOTS, SHOES, SLIPPERS AND CLOGS. (Ministry of Labour Statistics.) Monthly Average. 1927 i ve 1928 i 1929 - 1930 :— January February March ... April ... May ... June .. July August September October... Total Unemployed. 12,151 17,710 17.741 16,625 16,221 18,561 93,732 18,813 22,970 24,576 29,923 23,153 21.938 Percentage. 8-8 13-2 13-1 12-3 12:0 13-7 17-5 13-9 6-9 181 16-9 17-0 j6°1 LUXURY TRADES. Attention is sometimes directed to an apparent contradiction between the evidence of general industrial depression and the comparative prosperity in certain luxury trades. There is no real contradiction. When taxation is high or when, for any other reasons, people previously accustomed to save such money as they could, find those savings taken from them, or the sum saved insufficient to encourage its investment, the impulse to save is lessened or goes altogether. They spend the money instead on what they would previously have considered extrava- gance. At no time in its history was Berlin the scene of such apparently reckless extravagance, such crazy expenditure upon any and every kind of luxury, as when the value of the currency was dropping by thousands to the £ every hour. High taxation has to some extent the same effect as rapid fall of the value of money, more especially when the only apparent certainty 1s that taxation will increase and not decrease. Certain apparent exceptions therefore to the general depression may be for the time being in some degree due to these causes.