RELIEF WORKS

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3963, 2 July 1929, Page 4

RELIEF WORKS

An official memorandum, on proposals for 'relieving unemployment toy extensive public works was issued by the British Government shortly before the general election. Dealing with relief works, it stated: —“Any measures that are adopted should be so devised as to help the men to regain the capacity and, if need be, the will to , wojrk, and to put them in touch with districts where a man, if he tries, can obtain work. It is essential that the work should be carried out under economic conditions and should aim, as rapidly as possible, at the absorption of the men engaged upon it into ordinary industry. 'From this standpoint it is necessary that the work should be carried out under ordinary commercial conditions, by contract, at ordinary contralct prices, with a minimum allowance for ‘quality of labour’ and with the usual power to •the contractor .of dismissing men for inefficiency or slacking', such dismissal to have the proper consequences upon the right to receive support from public funds. It may further be stated with eon-, fidencie that the degree of waste and loss involved in actually carrying out' public worik! while State help for the purpose of giving employment inlcreases in an ascending radio according to the magnitude of the operations, because it becomes iless .and less possible, to maintain the ordinary comm'ercial conditions of work. No policy can be sound which, does not take cognisance of all these considerations, and it would be wrong to pick out any one or two of them to the neglect or exclusion of the others. All alike •enter into the question and should condition any policy that is contemplated.”