The Press Thursday, April 21, 1921. Unemployment and Finance.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17125, 21 April 1921, Page 6

The Press Thursday, April 21, 1921. Unemployment and Finance.

The delegates from the Central (Wellington) Progress League and the Returned Soldiers' Association who waited on the Acting-Prime Minister yesterday to ask that the Government should take stejs to prevent unemployment did not make my very helpful suggestions. They were quite right to place heforb Sir Francis Bell the claims of returned 6oldiers. although it need hardly be said that the Government is well aware of its obligations in this matter and does not mean to evade them. But it would appear that the delegates went rather further than was right or reasonable, and suggested that room could be made in the public service for returned soldiers by the retirement of some of the older public servants. Sir Francis Bell replied, and we are sure most people will heartily agree with him, that the .Government will not sacrifice Civil Servants with families dependent upon them for the benefit of returned soldiers. Returned soldiers will in any case, as Sir Francis remarked, be on the whole better looked after than the ' rest of the community, and if it is wise the Returned Soldiers' Association will avoid even the appearance of inclination towards the proposition that tho returned men must in any case, and whatever happens, be perfectly sheltered from any bad economic and financial weather that may affect other people. The delegates took up a much more correct attitude when they sug-

gested that the Government should put in hand for relief purposes remunerative public works. This the Government will do, so far as its means allovr, as a matter of ordinary business. But it is a question of money. The recently-ended financial year ended with a record surplus. The exact figures are not available, but the Prime Minister has indicated that the surplus will he five mil lions sterling. It is perhaps natural that to a good many people this sur plus should seem to be available for immediate spending. But it would be madness to spend it when conditions are what they are at present. The largo revenue collected during the financial year 1920-21 was the fruit partly of thehigh prosperity that ruled during tho greater part of the year, and partly of the abnormal receipts from Customs duties. Customs duties and land and income tax yielded nearly 16 millions sterling. Does anyone expect that th«> yield will come to anything within millions of that in the current year, in the face of an enforced curtailment of imports and such a drop in the values of our export products as must sensibly affect the prosperity of almost everybody? Of course, there must be a sharp drop in revenue. To meet the needs of the Government during the current year the five millions surplus is absolutely necessary. The Public Works Fund, Sir Francis Bell says, cannot be. supplemented out of revenue except in the gravest possible crisis. In the meantime it is desirable that there shall be no exaggerated talk about unemployment. The Dominion has enjoyea so many years of almost unbroken economic ease that even a small volume of unemployment excites remark. When to this we add that the art of agitation has been intensely cultivated, and that the bodies whose representatives waited on Sir Francis Bell are not without special skill in making a fuss, we shall have indicated that it is too early to suppose that a situation has arisen, or is developing, which demands that the Government shall take extraordinary measures to cope with it.