SUSTENANCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 14 January 1931, Page 2

SUSTENANCE

AN ESSENTIAL STUDY TO AVOID WASTE The question of the extent to which the expenditure of the £IOO,OOO collected for the Unemployment Board’s sustenance scheme will be remunerative must have been faced by the board, and that it has been silent on the point does not mean that it has escaped its notice. (writes “Blister” in “The Rost”). Its pronouncement of the details of the scheme will be awaited with interest by a community which is suffering the effects of reckless and unprofitable expenditure of public funds in the past. The sum is a considerable one, and might have been put to good use in the stimulation of vital industries, towards lowering the cost- of production, as has been suggested by the German Finance Minister (Herr Dietrich), who stressed the the fact that supporting an army of unemployed without some return could not be contemplated. This, in New Zealand, which has decided to embrace a scheme which Germany has found impracticable, is not at present possible, but the hoard will, no doubt, give the wise expenditure of its funds full consideration.

There would seem to be no possible means of making mere sustenance payments profitable, but. there are one or two points that suggest themselves in which savings might be made by the avoidance of easily achieved errors with the best will in the world towards the amelioration of the position. The best results can be achieved only by exercising the most impartial justice towards those assisted, whether by the provision of work or by sustenance. Sustenance paid to any man for whom there is work which he can do with an adequate return to the contributors of the scheme, is as much to ge avoided as the undue penalising of a refusal to undertake work for which the man is so unfitted that the return to the community would be negligible. It will he quite impossible to find every mail private work in his own line or trade, for the reason that the fact that he is out of work shows that that line is already in such a position that there are hundreds it cannot profitably employ. The basis of the sustenance scheme is compulsory subscription, in which all, employed and unemployed, share, and merely to employ an individual so it can be said that he is employed, irrespective of the return to be obtained by. the population from his efforts, will gain contributors nothing hut an aggravation of their financial difficulties. It cannot be said that anyone is excessively prosperous to-day, whether employed or not, yet if the principles underlying the No. 2 scheme of the board are allowed to continue in operation for the major scheme the problem will be intensified. The No 2. scheme was merely a relief measure, and not to he criticised on its merits entirely It afforded welcome relief to many, and was thus good, hut it cannot he said to have improved conditions, nor would its perpetuation in principle ,on a larger scale do so, for much of the work was only academically advantageous, even to the men employed, many of whom felt its gratuitous and valueless nature keenly. The sum collected by the board is too large to spend merely as a costly palliative, but scarce money and scarcer work form a world paradox, and the board has not an easy task. It is only by the most impartial justice to the assisted that tlie board can justify its" existence-,—the- assisted being ill this case the “community. Side by side with sustenance scheme there must be a provision of productive works. The common remedy for temporary spells of unemployment in the past has been public works, of more or less value and urgency, but anyone coil-, nected with relief work, municipal or public, knows that it is not every man who can handle a pick and shovel remuneratively to his employer. There are few of the “could but wont tvpe in New Zealand, rather the danger is that, to avoid accepting sustenance, men will undertake work at which they are practically useless. Men are now 'going out of jobs they have held m some cases for twenty and twenty-five years, and until the world decides that the depression is passing, they are unlikely to re-enter them. All kinds of tradesmen, from builders to engineers, are joining the ranks of those out of work, and the general dearth of expansion in industry at the moment makes it imperative that they take 9. e ? work. It is evident that more critical assessment of the possibilities of the individual is necessary than in the somewhat /haphazard allocations of work in the past, and unless it means the creation of a cumbrous and costly 'administrative machine, such a course , is eminently desirable, for the sake of all concerned, whether the Government decides to put in hand progressive and profitable works itself, or to stimulate rural industries, or the onus is left to the private employer.