The Goal Is Work For All

NZ Truth, Issue 1203, 20 December 1928, Page 6

The Goal Is Work For All

THE daily cluster of men around Trades Halls and , labor bureaux must serve to remind thinking people that the grim spectre of unemployment is still facing many thousands of homes throughout the Dominion. And Christmas is only a few days distant. . The accepted theory that unemployment was a winter problem has proved a fallacy, for, although midsummer is almost here, the position is little altered from what it was m June and July.., The last Government failed adequately to deal Avitli the problem, and achieved little by pushing the responsibility on to local bodies which were induced to create relief works which w.ere not required — virtually luxuries —m towns and cities. On the plea of shortage of capital, employers df labor decline to overload their wages bill with further workmen, and, with the end of the year at hand, many thousands of young men and women from schools and colleges are tp be thrown on the labor market to swell the already alarming number of unemployed. . Though its political champions boasted of the country 's educational system, it is hopelessly out of date if only for the reason that it provides no vocational guid-

ance to students.. No effort is made to determine aptitudes. The problem the new Government has to face is not only the relief of unemployment for the present, but its prevention m the future. There are several methods of achieving this end. but the chief problem to be solved at present con r eerns relief. < *'N.Z. Truth" can' recommend no better means to this end than a vigorous pushing-ahead with the main highways policy which the recent Government merely dabbled m. A. further, programme of city and town development is a wilful waste of money. Local bodies are quite 'able to develop their own roads from revenueit' their local affairs are administered competently.' It is m the country the greatest good can.be achieved, and the establishment of the main arterial road from Auckland to the Bluff should not be' lost sight of. Now Zealand lost a glorious opportunity of laying down a national memorial to its fallen soldiers m the form of an Apphin Way. when provincial districts, cities, boroughs and towns could have pooled their funds, and, instead of erecting, obelisks of stone, they could have laid down a national memorial' -with the memory of every fallen soldier v porpotuated m an avenue of trees on either side of the road. Here would have been a memorial of lasting value — a great, broad highway, just as expressive of remembrance at* any mute tablet. The money at present being derived m taxation from motorists alone would provide the nucleus of, a fund to speedily relieve unemployment, and urgency demands that this matter must be one of the first things tackled by the Government.