PRE-WAR PROSPERITY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 89, 12 October 1934, Page 7

PRE-WAR PROSPERITY

NOT LIKELY TO RETURN

ADJUSTMENT TO NEW

CONDITIONS

(By Telegraph) (Special to the "Evening Post.") AUCKLAND, October 11. , Some of the problems of the present and the future were dealt with by 'Archbishop Averill, Primate and Archbishop of New Zealand, in his charge to the Anglican Diocesan, Synod. His Grace said that instead of looking back with regret to' the standards of tho "good old days" before the war, peoplo must reconcile themselves to the fact that they were not likely to see in their day a return to the, prosperity of the prewar days. "While we are anxious that the standard of wages and tho spending capacity of the community should not be seriously reduced," he said, "yet it is useless to live in a 'fool's paradise' and imagine that tho available labour in tho world can be absorbed in useful industry in view of the ever-increasing tendency of scientific invention to supplant man-power. Until the world can adjust itself to the new conditions and realise that there must always be a considerable surplus of available labour under our present industrial system, we must be prepared for tho .unemployment problem to be more or less always with us. Shorter hours of labour and less working days in the week may afford some relief, but what about the standard of wages? Can the world adjust itself to the profitable and beneficial use of greater leisure, and will the extra leisure contribute to the development of personality, or the opposite? This is a problem for the Church as well as for the civic authorities. Wo realise that man has a right to live and a right to work for a living wage, and that working conditions should not militate against the true and full development of his personality. Thetime has passed for temporary expedients, and the unemployment question calls for reconstruction and readjustment of the whole question by the 'best brains available in the community.