After the Great War, King George V and Queen Mary tried to bolster the people of Britain, but many factors continued to cause problems, not just in England, but worldwide. The Great Depression didn’t just effect America, all major world powers suffered its effects. In 1933, the King opened the World Economic Conference in London--a meeting of representatives of sixty-six nations. The intensive conference lasted from June 12 to July 27, 1933, and was held at the Geological Museum in London. The goal of the conference was to win agreement on measures to fight global depression, revive international trade, and stabilize currency exchange rates. However, the conference was considered a failure as U.S. President Roosevelt, in early July, denounced currency stabilization.
The event is immortalized in the thirty-ninth card by the Wills’s Cigarette Company.
The reverse of the card reads:
THE OPENING OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC CONFERENCE, 1933
Never until the King opened the World Economic Conference on June 12th, 1933, had any Monarch faced an assembly at which the nations of the entire world were represented. His Majesty's speech-partly in English, partly in French-was transmitted to unnumbered millions all over the globe. At that date there were 30,000,000 unemployed, and sixty-six nations participated in this effort to restore prosperity. The Prime Minister Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who is seen on the rostrum, presided over the Conference, which took place in the new Geological Museum, South Kensington.
Here are some images from the historic meeting.
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