The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1928 A PERNICIOUS EVIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 482, 11 October 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1928 A PERNICIOUS EVIL

ITNEMPLOYMENT persists in Auckland as an out-of-season evil. Neither the advent of springtime nor the marked improvement in general business and financial conditions —both strong reasons for optimism and keener enterprise—has dispersed the record wintry gloom of enforced idleness. On the most conservative basis of computation a thousand men still are without work.

The actual number of unemployed in the Auckland district is beyond doubt a great deal more than one thousand, but there need he no political argument about statistics. Unemployment is prevalent enough to be pernicious. Even those observers whose political bias compels them to discount any estimate of unemployment other than their own have had to admit in vexation that the position to-day is worse than it was in the middle of winter.

A deputation of unemployed appealed to the Mayor of Auckland yesterday for relief, but did not obtain much more than an expression of sympathy, together with the assurance that the chief municipal administration would continue to do all it could to relieve some of the widespread and acute distress. It ought to be said in fairness that the City Council, with all its faults and failings, has been neither mean nor laggard in helping the unemployed. Already, it has spent over £135,000 on special relief works, 'while maintaining at the same time a substantial programme of routine municipal work and active enterprise. Of course, tlie City Council’s record as an employer (it ranks next to the State in that respect) might have been a great deal better had it promoted its policy of transport development with more wisdom than it practised. It was denied opportunity to go on with extension works because it tried to get all its financial needs rushed past the ratepayers in a erude lump. Thus authority for loans for essential transport development was refused as an exercise of the ratepayers’ lack of confidence in the administration. Some of that lost ground may be retrieved now if the council decides wisely to-day to expedite the establishment of a transport board representing the various municipal districts interested in tram and bus services. Much work, which would absorb several hundreds of the unemployed, requires to be done without a day’s delay. There is a staring need of tramway extensions. Ratepayers who have never lost faith in the future of Auckland and the certainty of its expansion will not hesitate to grant essential authority for expenditure if their confidence in administration be restored. Let the council do its plain duty without any further hesitancy or humbug, and clear the way to extensive and profitable enterprise. It is to be hoped that all the other local bodies will not leave the cure of vicious unemployment entirely to the Government and the City Council. They also have responsibilities, and there is not one of them without a great deal of work to be done—work that should be put in hand at once. Some people rave about the effect of concrete roads on unemployment and deplore the narrow scope for road maintenance. They need only step off the concrete ribbons in and beyond the city to find miles of streets gaping for repairs. And frequently where the streets are good tl(e footpaths are disgracefully bad. Much labour is required in gardens, but so long as inexperienced labourers demand the wages of skilled gardeners, hundreds of propertyowners will continue to let the weeds grow, or muck about themselves with a rake on Sunday morning. As for the politicians, they should not he taken seriously at all. Their inability to deal with unemployment has been proved in a record of ignominious failure. The cure of unemployment has become a task for intelligent citizens.