THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1929. UNEMPLOYMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5478, 23 September 1929, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1929. UNEMPLOYMENT.

Two subjects brought up at the Paeroa Chamber of Commerce meeting last week are of great interest not only locally, but nationally. One was that of unemployment, and the other the question of noxious weeds on Crown lands, both matters which could be taken as one affecting the other. The motion—which lapsed for want of a seconder—that Paeroa should disclaim all responsibility of unemployment, is worthy of further investigation. Should this attitude be adopted by every local body throughout the Dominion the Government would be forced to action, instead of wasting the country’s time and money in long-winded puerile speeches while men go workless and, in many cases, families go foodless. The value of the unemployment insurance scheme at present being shuttled with is very much to be doubted, as it lays itself open to grave abuse and to use as a dole. In England it has been proved times out of number that men through unemployment insurance, Board of ■Guardians, etc., could live better than by actually working, and, further, that they make a practice of doing so. Thus a certain section of England’s inhabitants are growing up in sloth, living useless, unproductive lives on money earned and contributed for their ease by working men. Thus a race of social parasites has been bred. New Zealand does not want this sort of thing, and neither does its unemployed. They ask for work, not charity : the right to work and feed themselves and their families by their own hands and brains, not by moneys contributed by others who may be just as needy in other ways. That is where noxious weeds and Crown lands come in. New Zealand has in that a splendid solution of its unemployment problem which no other* nation possesses. Make it, therefore, a national scheme to place the unemployed on weed-covered Crown land and" let them clear it. As they clear it, let the men have the opportunity to settle on what they have cleared. There are millions of acres of such land in the Dominion, enough for all the unemployed in the country. There are some of the men, of course, who would be utterly unsuited to take up land and run it with success, but with the forming of new communities and townships they in their turn would be absorbed in the hundred-and one activities which go hand in hand with more settlement. More men established in productive occupations the more money would circulate, and with more men earning, wants would be increased in, for instance, foodstuffs, clothing, farming appurtenances, etc.; and, therefore, more men would obtain employment in a recurring circle. Thus would the unemployed men and women of New Zealand secure what they are asking for—work, not charity.