UNEMPLOYMENT AND INDUSTRY

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1929, Page 7

UNEMPLOYMENT AND INDUSTRY

(Auckland Paper.) The statement in regard to unemployment promised by Sir Joseph Ward hla.s horn laid before Parliament, and it is a most satisfactory and crcdilal.le record. Nearly 14,000 applicants for work registered, and work lias been found for over 5600. More than 40. X) applications lapsed, over 1000 refused work, and over 500 are described as “unemployable.” There are about 2300 applications still pending, but only HKK) of these-, are from men prepared to accept work at any place where it may he available. These figures show 1 that the Government has been able to go a very long way toward the fulfilment of its promise to line! work for the unemployed within a limited time, and the Prime Atinister and his colleagues may be heartily congratulated on the courage and energy they have shown in hauditing this difficult and complex profdem.

But while. Sir Joseph Ward and Hs .Cabinet deserve all possible credit for their courageous attempt to grapple with the special phase of the unemployment problem that has been forced upon their attention here and now, they are not likely to delude themselves into the belief that they have done more than apply a temporary palliative to this grave social and industrial disorder. For the real difficulty about unemployment is that it is an inevitable and indispensable factor in the’existing economic sys-

tem. If there were no workers al-

ways waiting idle in the labour market, no industry already established ! could be extended and no new indusj try could be set up. It follows that unemployment is no accidental fact, hut a permanent feature of the productive system, and till this is roj cognised all attempts to deal with it effectively must be futile. From time to time the fact that' we have endeavoured to emphasise has been more or less frankly admitted. Twenty-five years ago, Air Arthur Chamberlain shocked the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce by reminding its members that they could not “carry on” without the unemployed, that floating margin .of “worldcss workers” from which an increased demand for labour must always be met. Alitcih more recently a distinguished Judge of the Australian Arbitration Court endeavoured to justify concessions to workers, depending on intermittent employment by the plea that “they also serve who only stand and waif.” But even those who regard the existence ‘ of the unemployed as necessary to t the progress and expansion of industry have as a rule hesitated to dl‘aW the inference which seems logically to follow that because they ftvo -indispensable to industry therefore they have a claim upon it for support. To some extent this claim has been admitted in all countries which; like England, have adopted a system of insurance against unemployment. But in reality the conclusion that wo have suggested can both in louic and in equity lie pressed much further. In most trades, it has been said, “there is normally an unemployed reserve of men, and the existence of such a reserve is held to be, " and probably really is, as necessary for the conduct of an industry as the reserves of an army are necessary for the conduct of war.” But the reserves in an annv receive their nay whether they are fighting at the front or in hospital or on leave; while the industry, ge-neraly speaking, refuses to pay its reserves anything. Surely if, when, a man joins a military force, he is remunerated (by it so long as be remains attached to it, it should follow that “when a man gives his strength to the service of an industry he has a right to expect that so long as ho works honestly he will be sure of a. decent livelihood.”

To quieten the apprehensions of those who may find in these opinions some taint of revolutionary or Bolshevik sentiment, we may explain that we have quoted from a statement of the unemployment problem which was submitted nine years ago to the Manchester Liberal Federation nod was publicly endorsed bv it. The conclusion reached by those who accepted these arguments was, in regard to the unemployed, that “the primary responsibility should be thrown upon each industry,, on the principle that, in normal conditions, ov'erv i”dustrv ought to maintain its own citizens out of i.ts own product. We are well aware of the practical difficulties in the wav of any such proposal, and we admit the dangers involved in any scheme of industrial remuneration that may permit workers to depend upon others for support. But unemployment is one of the gravest evils of the age; not even charity is so demoralising as starva-

tion; and we believe that it is along the line of advance we have indicated that the final solution of the problem mav be reached.