WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 June 1921, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

UNEMPLOYMENT.

THE GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS

(Our Special Correspondent;

WELLINGTON, June 7

In his latest statement concerning the unemployment trouble the Acting Prime Minister emphasises the point that the rates of pay fixed for relief work, 10s at day for single men and 12s a day for married men, are not intended to interfere with any established scale of wages. Nothing would give the Government greater satisfaction, lie says in effect, than to find that the promen in unnecessary and that they could obtain employment through other channels at a higher rate of pay. But this unhappily is not the case and the Government is face to face with the necessity of providing work and wages for as many hands as possible from the limited funds at its disposal. This seems to represent the plain iacts of the. position accurately enough and to finally dispose of the contention of Mr McCombs and his friends that Sir 1 Francis Bell and his colleagues have engineered unemployment with the object of cheapening labour. LABOUR AND LAND. The deputation that waited upon the Acting Prime Minister and the Minister of Lands yesterday with a piteous tale of soldier settlers who could not or would not pay their local rates, incidentially suggested another aspect of the unemployed question which the Government may not he a file to regard with the same equanimity as it can the Labour members’ ridiculous charges. D proverbially is a somewhat profitless business to cry over spilt milk, but there can be little doubt that the straitened condition ot the count i> s finances is largely due to the lavish expenditure of the Government upon the settlement of “returned men” upon improved lands. No one is finding fault with the spirit that inspired the effort on behalf of the men, but an increasing number of people are criticising unfavourably the method of its expression. Had some of the millions spent on purchasing improved lands, they maintain, been spent on breaking in with soldier labour Crown and Native lands for soldier settlement, many of the present difficulties would have been avoided and the men themselves would have been in most eases in a much better position than tliev are to-day.

MISLEADING STATISTICS. The chairman of the local chamber of commerce, naturally, is a little perturbed by the injustice done to the Port of Wellington by the official statistics. Wellington, he points out, is not merely the port for oversea shipments from the Customs district bearing its name, but also the port for the wide districts of Patea. Wanganui. Blenheim. Nelson. Westport. Greymoiil.li and Hokitika, These districts, strangely enough, were constituted by the Beer Duty Act of BIOS and since then exports produced within their borders have been credited in the official statistics to their respective ports. The effect of this practice, so the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce says, has been to make the exports from Wellington appear as rather less than their real volume. The Abstract of Statistics shows, for instance, that the value of exports from Wellington for the year ended September 30th last, was £0,809,953, while a« a matter of fact it was in. the vicinity of £16,000,000. Probably the other principal ports of the Dominion are in a similar position, but Wellington’s ease, from a statistical point of view, appears to be a particularly unfortunate one. POPULATION AND POLITICS.

The preliminary census returns show that the “drift northward” lias continued since 1914 and that the increase in the population of the Dominion during the last six years lias amounted to 87,599 or 13.5 per cent on this side of Cook Strait, and to 20,920 or 6.7 per cent on the other side. This means that in the re-adjustment of parliamentary representation, which follows upon each census, tlie South Island will lose two or three members in the House, thus giving the North Island a preponderance of eighteen or twenty members. The precise change will depend to some extent upon the operation of the “electoral quota” which cannot be determined till the members of the urban and rural populations are definitely ascertained. The North Island now being in the ascendency there is no talk of any arrangement by which the South might retain its present number of members, while an increase were given to the North, and Canterbury and Otago must console themselves with the recollection that the Chief Justice has named them as the cradles of the brain and push of the country.