WHAT THE “DOLE” HAS DONE

Hokitika Guardian, 7 August 1930, Page 2

WHAT THE “DOLE” HAS DONE

Writing in the “New Zealand Traveller” on “England Revisited,” Dr. J. B. Condliffe, formerly professor of economics at' Canterbury College, makes some very interesting remarks about the “dole”: “The number of unemployed is rising, and ; now amounts to over a.million and threequarterfl, But, in spite of these and other alarming statistics, there are few visible signs of distress. ,i When I left New York two months' ago there were daily bread lines in the Bowery, where hundreds, and even thousands, of homeless and starving unfortunates were being fed. The number of unemployed in the United States then was estimated as between two and four millions. No statistics are kept, for there is no unemployment relief as in Britain, but there can ’be no doubt of the magnitude of the problem. One’s first impression, then, is the enormous effect of the so-called dole in relieving the distress consequent on unemployment. There are undoubtedly abuses of the system, and it can hardly be regarded as a permanent method of righting a difficult economic situation; but, as a temporary measure, it is readily defensible. One shudders to think what the cost might have been in human life and suffering without the dole. There would have been a. general lowering of wages, and the working people would have paid even more of the cost of dislocation that followed the war than they have done.”