UNEMPLOYMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT.

Not all of the representations made by members of the Labor deputation which waited on Ministers on Saturday on the subject of unemployment were of a sort promising to be in any way helpful to the objects of their concern. After all the times that it has been raised and hostility it invariably arouses, Mr Roberts, representing the Alliance of Labor, would have done much better not to revive the claim that the standard wage should be paid to men on relief works. The public simply cannot follow the argument that men for whom work is specially made or who are doing work to which they are unaccustomed, and doing it less efficiently on that account, shall be paid at the same rate which they would otherwise receive. Any man is most naturally an inferior worker who is employed on a job that is strange to him and the men who make the first victims of unemployment are not usually the most efficient at their own callings. A double disadvantage, therefore, is imposed on them when they are required to bo square pegs in a round hole. The Labor bodies protest at times that they do not ask for charity for the unemployed, but to ask that they should be paid more than they can earn is a plain request for charity to that extent. The suggestion, also, is a suggestion to limit the amount that is available, or can be made available, for the relief of unemployment, and to prevent it going round as far as possible. What is needed is to ensure that at the earliest possible moment every man shall be employed at a wage which shall suffice for first necessities, and that problem in itself is difficult enough without going out of the way to complicate it. When Mr Roberts raised the question of unemployment insurance ho was told by the Prime Minister that that was a matter more within the province of Labor’s political leader. Mr Holland showed his wisdom, we think, in preferring not to raise it. The question of unemployment insurance has been threshed out in the House, and nothing can bo done on those lines by which present hardships can be eased. Mr Coates bad good reason for denying that unemployment is worse now than it has ever been. The fact that he bad to go back to the ’eighties for a position comparable to that of the last two years means that it is only within a very modified signification of the word that the disease can be said to be “chronic” in Now Zealand. It is useless to blame the Government for its existence. Its causes, bound up with over-importation, reduced prices for products, and postwar economic conditions from which the whole world has been suffering, are well known. The Government has done not a little to relieve it by augmenting from the ranks of the unemployed its public works staff, by promoting special works, and by reducing immigration to a minimum since April last. The disease is not limited to New Zealand. It was a cause for satisfaction in Great Britain that unemployment, which was previously excessive, had for some months been steadily decreasing. The latest figures show that it has slightly risen again, and both improvement and relapse, we can be sure, have been due to general causes, the Government possessing no more than the smallest power over either. A few weeks ago Mr Garden, secretary of the Trades and Labor Council, was reported as stating that there were 20,000 unskilled workers unemployed throughout New South Wales, and that was following the term of office of a Labor Government. . So far as our position is concerned, all the conditions by which unemployment is influenced seem to be pointing now towards a more favorable state, and apart from the fact that what is usually the worst instead of the best season for the affliction is

approaching, the position would not b© more than instantly disquieting. For tho present, however, unemployment exists, and we shall wait with impatience for more news of Government afforestation and land schemes by which it is hoped to lighten it.