Unemployment Relief Worked to Limit

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 631, 6 April 1929, Page 6

Unemployment Relief Worked to Limit

LAND POLICY AS CURE "WE CAN DO NO MORE” (From Our Resident Reporter) WELLINGTON, To-day. “We admit that your Government has taken on an additional number of men on public works. It is the Prime Minister’s job to organise work for those who want it.”—President of the New Zealand Labour Party. "If you can find a body of men who can do more for the workers and the country as a whole than this Government, find them and let them come here.”— The Prime Minister. rpHE above remarks were made yesterday when a deputation from the Trades and Labour Council of the New Zealand Alliance of Labour, IntrodiAed by the Leader of the Labour Party,-Mr. H. E. Holland, waited on the Prime Minister to-day in connection with unemployment. Mr. J. Thorn, president of the Labour Party, was the chief speaker, and he urged that it was the duty of the Prime Minister to solve the unemployment problem. In Wellington alone were 500 registered unemployed. ADVANCED LAND SETTLEMENT The Prime Minister, in reply, said that he had been doing all possible, and soon would be introducing a scheme which would effect numbers more of the unemployed. He had laid it down as a principle that to settle the unemployed there must be an advanced system of land settlement. “I do not agree with the published reports of the statement of my utterances placed before your conference in Wellington,” he said. “With one material addition, I laid it down as an absolute principle that in order to arrive at a proper solution of the unemployment problem we must have an advanced system of land settlement. That Is my contention. You may agree with it or you may not. From the very day we came into office until this afternoon In the Cabinet, we have been dealing with the unemployed from one end of the country to the other. “You can take my word for it that never before in the history of New Zealand have so many men been placed on relief works by any Government as have been engaged by this Government since it came into office.” The Prime Minister continued that the Government, without pressure, increased the relief rates of wages. Recently the secretary of the Labour Union in Dunedin telegraphed to him inquiring whether relief could be granted at 14s a day. He (the Prime Minister) replied offering to place 50 married men on work, not in Dunedin, but just out of it. The secretary telegraphed back not agreeing to the placing of men, but asking what was going to be done with the hundreds out of work In Dunedin. He had neveg been asked to make provision for them. £25,000 SUBSIDIES "Those 50 married men never took that work up,” said Sir Joseph, “and In turn I was asked to duplicate the whole of the existing railway line between Dunedin and' Port Chalmers. When I was in the South I agreed to make a contribution of £25,000 immediately to the city of Dunedin by way of subsidy in order to let them put Into operation certain works which would provide relief. The only stipulation I made was that a subsidy -would not be given for work in the shape of maintenance, because obviously that was the work of the ratepayers. “I offered £25,000 unreservedly and it has never been accepted,” continued Sir Joseph. “I also offered £25,000 to Wellington, but I understand the expenditure of it was held up owing to a difference between the City Council on one hand and the Labour Party on the other. Within the next week we are going to do something which is of considerable importance. It will affect 300 or 400 more. The Prime Minister said the time was coming when it would be necessary for every man out of work to make a declaration that he had been in the country for three or four months. “We are doing our best,” concluded Sir Joseph. “We will go on doing our best. Nobody can do more.”. Mr. Munro pointed out that Sir Josepli had apparently been misreported. In Dunedin he had not used the word reproductive. What he said was that the works should be economic.