UNEMPLOYMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 22142, 24 September 1935, Page 12

UNEMPLOYMENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Mr Savage does not stand alone in holding the- opinion that reduction of the unemployment tax at the present time is premature. He is backed by a big majority of weekly wage earners, as well as by a big proportion of the less selfish part of the rest of the community, and, most naturally, when we have over 50,000 of our fellow countrymen living in various degrees of poverty amidst plenty. I take it that “ spoon feeding,” the expression used by the Hon. W. Downie Stewart in the House recently, means helping the helpless, and it is to be hoped that the people of Dunedin took note that he said such practice must stop. You, sir, have not wept “ When that the poor have cried,” as Caesar did. On the contrary, when demands have been made for better conditions you have persistently upraised an obstacle with the query, “ Where is the money to come from?” While your supporters have reiterated their cry, “ Ah, there’s the rub.” Now, when, judging by the amount left in the fund at the end of the year, there is enough and to spare, you say there is no need to build up a surplus, apparently forgetting or callous of the fact that those for whom the money was given by the people of New Zealand have meantime been suffering ’ unjustified want. True. it is that a surplus should not be built up, but more true that the money withheld should have been spent in alleviating the suffering and want of the unemployed. To say that the' tax should he reduced a proportion of the recipients of relief are not genuine is simply taking advantage of circumstances at the expense of the majority, and makes one think that, even now, it is not known outside, the ranks of the unemployed themselves, how demoralising it is for that majority to have to • accept charity, or how they long for the opportunity to again hold up their heads and take their place among their more fortunate fellows. Another phase of unemployment was brought to my notice recently by a statement in your paper to the effect that Selfridge’s department store in London is now staffed, or partly so, by men and - women-with college education, which goes to prove that many of the unemployed of the present day would not have been so but for the fact that they have been supplanted by an influx from a more influential stratum of our social system into their sphere.— I am, etc., Hopeful.

September 24. [Contrary to our correspondent’s statement, we have constantly pleaded for more liberal relief conditions, and gradually they have been liberalised till they are better now than at any previous time. In those circumstances a test of tax requirements might fairly he supplied by our correspondent’s own statement that “ judging by the amount left in the fund at the end of ' the year, there is enough and to spare.”—Ed. E.S.]