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Hokitika Guardian, 15 February 1933, Page 4

Discussing the problem of unemployment, in a New Year message published in the News Leiter, Mr Ramsay MacDonald wrote: —-“The issue lies between those who are working at the problem in detail and those who are not working at it at all but speaking about it and throwing .sniffs of red hewnligs, like th,g ,abolition of any form of needs test, under the noses of hard-stricken people. So long as these sniffs can be put out as forerunners of favours to come, those who are really . working ait the puohlem will he Handicapped, hut that will only last until the unemployed are convinced that those who make these promises can never fulfil them, and that if they had a chance of trying they would only increase unemployment. The root difficulty is the ap--1 plication of the doctrine of economy. Is economy in the form of slopping work appi’ied wisely in every case? T.t may not lie, hut that is just where the helpful critic could be of use. In a groat number ol cases it has been applied most wisely, because it struck at what in it' nature was an extravagant and unproductive waste of capital, and meant both directly and indirectly an increased cost- of production, a damage to credit, and a consequen' imrc'se of unemployment, j This is not a matter of a cl gma or an economic dictum. It is a matter of decision oil cases and classes of cases—for instance, that of house building. The policy of the Govern-

ment is not simply to cut down but to wend out waste or unbearal!c extravagance. It can be mi-repro on ted and lie the subject of much cio. imciation, but this 'truth cannot be gainsaid: You cannot help flic unemployed by in; reas.ng’ the diffieuhios of t e employed. That was a .Socialist axiom •so long as British Socialism was not a scheme of public relief but one of communal eo-opeaation in work.’’