UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1930, Page 1

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

THE POSITION IN BRITAIN. HIGH STANDARD OF WORK REQUIRED. AUCKLAND, Jan. 13. A hopeful view rtf the unemployment problem in Britain was expressed by Sir James Hamilton, chairman of directors .of the Yorkshire Insurance Company, who arrived from Sydney by the Aorangi. Sir James is chairman of the York Labour Exchange, and was a member of Lord Blanesburgh’s committee which conducted an exhaustive inquiry into the working of the Unemployment Insurance Act. I had already been pointed out, Sir James] said, that in spite of all the unemployment at present existing the number of persons -employed in Britain was greater now than it was at the outbreak of the Great War. He personally .that nthe trouble would right itself in time, although in the coal and cotton industries, which presented the most difficult problem, the process would necessarily take a long time. Those two industries plainly could not recover their old prosperity in a short time, unless they could regain all 1 their export markets. British coal, he believed, would yet make up a good deal of its lost ground in overseas countries because of its special qualities. Lately, cargoes had been shipped to very reniote points, including ports in Australia. The industry’s future also lay in the treatment of coal for the extraction of oils and other products. So far as unemployment in general was concerned, it was too often assumed that trade depression was entirely to blame. His own experience went to show that in Britain changed conditions in many industries had caused employers to set a higher standard of work, and this led to the unemployment of those who failed to come up to that standard.

This went hand-in-hand with the introduction of newer and better methods. The workers thus laid on one side were mostly elderly men, and their chance of getting work was small, hence they tended to swell the mass of permanently unemployed. Such men had been carried to some extent by unemploment insurance, but some other provision was needed. This, it had been suggested, might take the form of an increased old-age pension. Speaking as an insurance man, Sir

James said he did not tthink that the British industrial insurance scheme, as a scheme of that kind, could be much improved upon. It was quite true that large advances had bad to he made from the public funds to enable it to carry on. This meant that contributors, whose credit in the fund had were mortgaging their future, contridisappeared through unemployment butions. Manv of the older men un-

fortunately would never he able to repay the advances in full. On the other hand the payment of benefits was very well supervised by local committees, on which the workers were represented, and imposition was reduced to a minimum. It was also true that in cases of destitution, if the scheme

were not available, the unemployed would simply lx* thrown on rates or on some form of State relief. That relief would have to be established in some South Wales parishes, where almost the whole population was made ■up of miners and their families. i