ANOTHER VIEW

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 517, 28 April 1933, Page 3

ANOTHER VIEW

MAKING WORK SOME SENSIBLE THOUGHTS ON UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM. APPLI C ATIO'N TO NEW ZEALAND "If we can iget men producing things and adding to the value of things produeed we shall be on the way out of our troubles. We shall never get out of them by tinkering with non-productive jobs, socially, they may be better thian the dole, but economicaaly worse, because they involve the waste of p'lant and material as well as money." This is the conclusion of a very well-reasoned article in a recent issue of the Sydney Bulletin. In this articlq points are made concerning the unemployment problem that apply with striking force to some features of the situation in New Zealand. The article, headed "Making Work," reads : — "It would be 'interesting to know how many people a igiven number of primary producers can maintain. *' At Broken Hill the other day evidence was given by the secretary of the Mining Managers Association regarding the pop'ulation of the town and the number of men employed on the mines at" various dates. With 7267 men on the mines there was a population of 31,350; with 7219 employed, 31.600; with 6253 employed, 31,750. Tmat gives approximately five people to one workman. But the ore mined keeps the great smelting works at Por Pirie going; these call for coal and coke from Newcastle, and sh'ipping between ports; the zinc concentrates keep the zinc works at 'Risdon (Tasmania) employed. Broken Hill and Pirie and Risdon grow no food, and iprobably these three groups maintain a further population of 20,000 foodraisess. By this time we have a pyramid of probably 80,000 people based on Broken Hill. And that is little more than the beginning. All these people .want clothes and hats and boots and homes to live in, ra.nd gramophones; and the men who want to sell the boots and gramophones call for string and wrapping paper; and — there is no end to the operations which the hauling of a truek of ore out of a Broken Hill mine sets going. "But how is it .all paid for? This truck of ore, which put3 a hundred men at work, is not worth more than a couple of pounds; and alongside that the miraele of the loaves and fishes seems hardly a miraele at all. The explanation lies in the f.act that everybody who comes into the procession adds value to what he touches; and as long as he does that the movement can go on interminably. The crude ore is fed into the mill, which gets rid of the bulk of the dross and malces a partial separa.tion of the mfetals; it goes on to the smelters or the zinc works, where the process of separation is completed; the products go on to the metal-workers. All these call for food, which is supplied by the men who have taken grain and multiplied it; and they with the others call for clothing — and here we have the entire process repeated. "But suppose we put ,a. hundred men at work filling up ai hole to xnake a sports ground. They eat just a3 much it is true, and require just as much clothing and housing. But there- is this great diiference: what the miners produce is not only in itself saleable, but is something which will go on 'giving work' — the ore goes to1 the smelters and the metals go to the metalworkers. On the other Land, the men who are put on to shift sand do their job, and out of it flows no stream

of further operations There is no fruit from their labour; they have to be paid out of somebody -else's fruit. These other people ought to be getting the value they .add to whatever they touch; that is their rightful harvest. But if they have to share their harvest with too great a number of non-pro-ducers — the men whose work i3 giving no return — then obviously they are in | great danger of running short themselves. That i3 what is the matter with most Australian industries, and especially primary industries, to-day. Too many non-producers demand a share of their product, -or too many producers demand more than the value they have added to the product. "Again and again the Bulletin has declared that the re-employment of our people is not so great a problem as it is made out to be. We have seen what can be done with the production of a truck of ore. So long as everybody adds value to the product he touches, the procession can go on indefinitely. It would be easier for the 300,000 unemployed in Australia today to keep themselves than it is for the million or so who are at work to keep themselves and the other 300,000. The more we .add to the 300,000' the more difficult will it be, too, for the million to keep igoing."