The Sun FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1928. “DO NOT BLAME THE POLITICIANS"!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 269, 3 February 1928, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1928. “DO NOT BLAME THE POLITICIANS"!

EMPLOYMENT will not be increased in Auckland or anywhere “ else by merely asserting that exports are on the up grade and that there is hope of better times. Such soothing talk about the plight of the unemployed is sheer claptrap. Hope of better times has never weakened throughout the whole period of economic and industrial depression, but in spite of a hopeful mood and much political assertion as to the community having turned the corner at last and entered upon the straight, broad road to prosperity, better times for everybody have not yet arrived. All the time unemployment has been on the up grade, too. The grade has steepened so steadily in this attractive district that the unemployment muster at the flush of summer time is not less than 3,000 on a conservative estimate—the worst on record.

Of course, this is the Parliamentary election year, and therefore it is the duty of slavish supporters of the Government to urge that things are really not too bad or, if things are none too good, to plead an honourable discharge for the administrators. Whatever the causes and effects of unemployment, please do not blame the Government and all politicians! “That course may satisfy some consciences,” observes an apologetic commentator, “but it neither provides work nor cures the need for doing so.” If conscience be concerned in the question what about the conscience of those who have taken up a passive attitude toward the increasing evils of unemployment? Their consciences, if at all sensitive to stark facts, must be uneasy. The passive policy of the Government, and of all politicians, and commentators who wallow in the soothing syrup of political criticism, has failed completely to lessen unemployment. The winter blight of unemployment, which then was treated as merely a seasonal trouble, has become a chronic disease, apparently beyond cure. Nothing is to be gained from a shrewish admonition of the Government. It is strong enough numerically—too strong that way, indeed—to worry about adverse public opinion. But neither the Government nor the Opposition parties of politicians can be absolved from blame in respect of the causes of record unemployment. They displayed a notorious lack of constructive statesmanship when the subject of unemployment engaged their voluble attention last session. It is true that the Government quite promptly then made arrangements for the winter employment of an additional two thousand unemployed men on the various publie works. It is true, too, that Parliament agreed without delay or quibbling to load the responsibility for practical unemployment relief on to local and authorised these secondary administrative organisations to borrow money without a poll of the ratepayers for municipal works in aid of the unemployed.

But it is also true that neither the Government nor all the politicians, after providing these palliatives and divesting themselves of responsibility, did nothing at all in the form of constructive measures for correctively dealing with the causes and effects of unemployment. They preferred the curse of unemployment to its cure. Instead of decreasing the burden of taxation as the first remedy, the Government and all the politicians increased taxation.

To-day, there are over 9,000 less workers on the land than there were two years ago. Industries are depressed, and thousands of potential workers are trapped in idleness. And a king’s ransom is being spent on charitable aid for able-bodied men and women. If these facts do not prick the consciences, of politicians; if these disgraceful conditions do not demand political action, the whole system of government is an expensive farce.