The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY. MARCH 28, 1929 THE CRY FOR WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 624, 28 March 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY. MARCH 28, 1929 THE CRY FOR WORK

ANIGHT shelter or doss-house for distressed unemployed men in Auckland is to be opened by the City Mission early in May so as, more quickly than usual, to take the edge off winter’s chill. The project is a humane service, but it is not the sort of enterprise that should give joy to a progressive corumunity or add to its pride in rich resources. And yet such a shelter is undeniably an urgent need. Even now too many industrial derelicts are sleeping on park benches and under generous trees. They fortunately have been favoured by a long summer and a genial autumn, hut more fortunate citizens have noticed that already many shop windows are deeorat&d with a comforting display of eiderdown quilts. That emotional phase of unemployment, however, is really neither grievous in extent nor terrible in intensity. But it actually exists and therefore calls for remedial attention without further delay. From a general point of view rather than from that of distressed individuals, there are wqrse features of the unemployment scourge. One of these is the disconcerting fact that, although the Government, with all the ardour of a new administration anxious to create a good impression and eager to please everybody, has almost doubled the State’s normal measure of unemployment relief, the problem of finding work for idle men still remains the greatest task of raw administrators. Moreover, nobody is pleased with what has been done on the highest scale of expenditure, and least pleased of all are many of the men who have been placed in employment on expensive public works. The New Zealand Workers’ Union at Wellington headquarters demands the appointment of a commission of inquiry to investigate allegedly “wretched conditions on public works and brutal treatment.” In the heated emotion of discontent the union virtually yearns for a revival of the treatment given to such workers by their old friend the enemy, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates. Some people are beginning to learn slowly That in some things old friends may be the best friends, and also (to vary the picture) that new brooms have prickly bristles. The evils of unemployment last year helped to put the then nebulous United Party into administrative office, and the same curse in a different form may yet be largely the cause of throwing the minority United Government out of the Treasury benches. It is probably true that the Government deserves sympathy, notwithstanding its own initial weakness in having invited an exercise of the opposite sentiment. It pitched its pre-election promises too high, created an anticipation that, by some magical method of revived Liberalism, it would make a quick and an abiding end to unemployment, and then rushed headlong into the old rut in which suecessiye Governments in the past wallowed in extravagant futility. Ordinarily, public works, ds controlled by the State, maintain any number between 6,000 and 7,000 men in employment. The total now exceeds 14,000, and the cry for more and still more unemployment relief is heard higE and shrill above all other pleas for Government assistance throughout the Dominion. Within three months the Government placed 3,000 unemployed men on public works, and the outstanding result to-day is a demand for a searching inquiry into so-called brutality of treatment and a seething mass of discontent. Undoubtedly, the Government needs sympathy. It has been said by some observers who dislike seeing things as they are that it is incredible that unemployment has increased so rapidly with the Government’s greatest activity in providing relief works. The time has passed for incredibility. For months past the pleadings for work at the Labour Bureau in Auckland have averaged 1,000 a week, while the plaeings rarely have exceeded 100 a week, and occasionally the numerical measure of relief has dropped below fifty. Somewhere in the sorry business there is something far wrong. It is, of course, possible that too many skilled workers, who have been jostled out of their ordinary occupation by the continuous pressure of imported goods that could and should be manufactured in New Zealand, have been absorbed on public works and therein have experienced causes for discontent. And it is certain beyond dispute that many rural workers have been lured under the Government’s sheltering wing by the prospect of receiving 14s a day in circumstances that do not always make an excessive drain on perspiration. In any case, the stark truth remains that, at a time when money actually is plentiful, prospects exceptionally good, and a new Government in power, flushed with triumph and the glow of most excellent intention, unemployment is rife and obdurate. “We do not want dictators, but men who know their jobs,” screams Mr. Lloyd George, whose scheme for unemployment elimination in Great Britain even makes Sir Joseph Ward look like a modest, timid and hesitant financier !

CITY VALUATIONS

AS a result of widespread dissatisfaction with the latest city valuations, the Assessment Court this year had practically a record sitting. Just on 700 objections were entered, qnd though a few of these lapsed through the failure of the petitioners to appear, in most eases they were backed by vehement personal protests, and a surprisingly large number of the objections were upheld. It is the ratepayer’s privilege, as counsel for one of the objectors observed, to grumble at his valuations. The task of the valuer tends to make an offieer who may be of amiable personal qualities one of tbe most unpopular men in tbe city. Many, in their narrowness, do not hesitate to ascribe to him prejudice and personal animus. He is'hailed as the apostle of a “policy of squeeze,” and made the target for hostile if not openly offensive letters.

Much of this is inevitable—the almost automatic reaction of the free-thinking citizen to anything that affects his pocket. Yet, the unusual number of objections this year and the heartiness of the protests made in Court, cannot he attributed solely to these almost instinctive processes. Can it be that the City Council, as an embittered ratepayer asserted, really is embarking on “a policy of squeeze”? The amount by which the valuer’s assessments were reduced by the Court in case after case showed a severe divergence between ideas of equity as held*by the valuer and as held by the assessor. To standardise the valuer’s ideas may not be feasible, but it should have been possible in a number of the cases reviewed to reach a fairer basis without the necessity of appeal to the Court. The valuer is merely the agent for the City Council, with an unpleasant duty to jierform, and, of course, the City Council has to have its rates to pay for municipal services, and is entitled to reap the rewards of the improvements it creates. Care should be taken, however, that the policy of taking valuations to the absolute maximum, with the reservation that the ratepayer can always protest if he is goaded sufficiently, should not be pursued too far.