The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1931.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1931, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1931.

(SUSTENANCE ALLOWANCES. Thebe should bo very general agreement with the representation which the Mayor of Dunedin, says the Times, has made to the Unemployment Board that it is preferable that the Board should utilise itn funds in making grants for work to be undertaken by local authorities than in paying sustenance allowances to men who are unemployed and their dependents. As the Mayor puts it, “a man earning money is a man with more hope in life than a man who is reduced to living on sustenance.” Moreover, a nian who receives a sustenance allowance, without providing service in return for it, certainly deteriorates. There are believed to be large numbers of young men in Great Britain at the present time who do not know what it is to have to work for. a living, because they have been in receipt of the so-called dole from the time when they were capable of being employed, and who, by reason of this, have lost any inclination for work that they may ever have possessed. The creation of dependency, writes Mr C. Delisle flume in Current History, leads to j tier tin. “This is , . . an effect only of flie maintenance fur the aidebody unemployed. Nor is the effect due to any 1 moral turpitude in them, Every man in any social class tends to deteriorate if lie is placed in a position in which active life is impossible. The situation in which great numbers are without occupations requiring effort lrom them is it itself unhealthy. Moreover, flip treatment of that situation, which, allowing these people to live, gives them no necessity to work, may increase the general ill-health.” These are considerations to which the members of the Unemployment Board must themselves, as intelligent men, be fully alive and they should convince the Board of the real need of exploring every possible avenue through which work may be provided for the unemployed before it resorts to the pernicious expedient of paying sustenance allowances. I he Board seems to have been devoting a ( mod deal of attention in the last few days of the preparation of the machinery under which 'sustenance allowances may be granted. Since _ the Unemployment Act contains provision for the payment of sustenance it may

be presumed to he necessary that regulations should he drafted to meet the emergency of giving effect to this provision, and this lias been done; but it cannot he seriously doubted that it will be an unfortunate development in tlie treatment of the problem of unemployment, when the State, as represented by the Unemployment Board, acknowledges its inability to cone with the problem save by the introduction of a system corresponding with that widely known as the dole in Great Britain.