SIGNIFICANT FIGURES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 252, 15 June 1932, Page 4

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES

We publish to-day a most interesting and significant comparison of the unemployment increases in the various countries of the world. The most disquieting aspect of the position revealed is that New Zealand is placed second to France with the unenviable distinction of the second highest percentage increase in the list. France shows an increase of 523 per cent followed in order by New Zealand, 508; Belgium, 98; Finland, 73; Czecho-slovakia, 57; Italy, 53; Denmark, 49; Canada, 25; Germany, 24; Norway, 21; Irish Free State, 18; Australia, 11. The figures have been compiled by the International Lahour Office at Geneva, and place the efforts of this Dominion to meet its unemployment position in a most revealing light. Our politicians have repeatedly stressed the serious nature of the position and without their reiterations, it is already abundantly plain from the evidence on every hand. But none of these periodic official pronouncements, place New Zealand in its true perspective with the rest of the world. It is as well for the New Zealand public to appreciate just how far the strenuous'endeavours of its politicians have advanced it in meeting the unemployment problem. The comparison, and the reflections which it arouses, are not complimentary. As a primary producing country, still only par-

tially developed, this Dominion has not the same complex problems which confront industrial and more thickly populated countries. With that fact in mind, there is ground for very grave anxiety not only in the extent of unemployment, but in the efficacy of the measures | which are being employed to check its progress.