SURPLUS LABOUR PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1932, Page 10

SURPLUS LABOUR PROBLEM

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Reading an old report upon the unemployment of some years ago, I thought that in many respects it answers to a large extent the problems of to-day. "Since the problem of the unemployed is an acute and growing one, and since the welfare of its citizens is the purpose of a State, .the burden of dealing with this problem must rest with the State. Repeated investigations have established the fact that the majority of the unemployed are in that condition entirely from the force of economic circumstances over which they have no control, and since private enterprise has entirely failed to cope with tho problem, as was inevitable, in view of the gigantic dimensions to wh"ich industry has grown, the State must deal with it if the Dominion is to come but on top. It is the duty of the Government to maintain a _ balance of power between the various kinds of workers within its jurisdiction: but the existence of this shifting surplus of unemployed labour puts the labouring class necessarily in a relatively powerless position, as compared with the managing class. To adjust this balance, the State must devise some means for the absorption and utilisation of this surplus labour. An investigation <# the origin of the unemployed problem in the large and acute form in which it presents itself to-day, makes it clear that it is the result of the

wrong use of State machinery, on thei part of the stronger in the industrial partnership, viz., Capital against Labour. It is better for the community to endeavour to enable men to tide over periods of temporary emergency than to allow the worker to be forced to seek relief, to drift into the ranks of pauperism, and to be ever alter a permanent charge on the community. Nothing will be done so long as there is the slightest chance of the difficulty bemg met temporarily by the frequent and mischievous intervention o£ charity Charity is being used simply and solely to stop the agitation for a serious national attempt to deal with unemployment. The disease rather than the symptom must be treated by, firstly, national and private thrift:" secondly, they would have to face in future more scientific organisation of industry, which would involve the classification of the various grades of the people who were ■employed, the unemployed to be separated from the unemployable; and both unemployed and unemployable to be separated from the physically unfit. They. I would have to assume as a State greater responsibilities towards the deserving and assert greater control and discipline over the undeserving Thirdly, they .must look to the land and make it more productive, extend the system of public works, such as making of roads, and State enterprise in regard to afforestation."—l am, etc., CM,