The Star. 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 3, 1929 A LONG QUEUE LENGTHENS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 653, 3 May 1929, Page 8

The Star. 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 3, 1929 A LONG QUEUE LENGTHENS

ONE o£ the least attractive sights in Auckland these mornings is the queue of unemployed leading to the narrow door of the Labour Bureau. And as the days shorten the queue lengthens. Both the registrations of unemployment and the numbers of unfilled applications are now the highest that have been known in New Zealand for years.

These plain facts may not be pleasant, hut they should not be suppressed or ignored simply because of the silly idea among smug observers (whose sole experience of hunger has been nothing worse than the greed of appetite at a seaside iiienic) that candid discussion of unemployment is depressing. There should be no acute depression at all in a community that holds a leading place in the Dominion for increased production and other substantial evidence of great resources and financial soundness. The banking institutions have become almost embarrassed with the richness of stored deposits, and yet thoroughfares and the lanes to and from the sources of assisted employment and charitable relief are overrun by the unemployed. There was a time when many people protested against workers loitering at work, hut now there is too much reason to protest against too many potential labourers working at loitering. On the bedrock of a conservative estimate Auckland has lost not less than £200,000 within the past twelve months through unemployment and an essential record expenditure on charitable relief. Ratepayers and generous citizens during that period have had to spend over £50,000 on the alleviation of the worst social distress. Hundreds of-working people have been compelled to exhaust all their savings in a battle with unemployment. And the sum of £150,000 at least in lost wages has been withdrawn from the purchasing power of the community. Yet, some complacent and hopelessly callous critics of a lamentable position have had the brazen fortitude to suggest that unemployment merely has been seasonal and never as bad as stated by sympathetic observers. Twelve months ago to the day the registrations of the unemployed in this city averaged 650 a week. Possibly the system or the habit of unemployment registration was not then as thorough as it has become under the spur of a chronic need of relief. To-day. the registrations in Auckland exceed one thousand a week, and for weeks past have never been far away from that disgraceful mark. So, if the Reform Government had to stand or fall by its ability or lack of ability to solve the problem of unemployment, what about the test confronting the United Government which already has lost its right to he called new, and looks like losing its new ideas? The Prime Minister has announced modestly (the old days of making political proclamations with a flourish of trumpets has gone) that the Cabinet has approved of a further £2,000 beingspent on the relief of the unemployed of Auckland, work to he found in the Coromandel district. Due gratitude should he felt and expressed for this exercise of Ministerial generosity, hut after all the sum will provide less than a week's work for a thousand men. Still, it is something to the good in bad times for unskilled workers.

When all has been said and done it is clear that the greatest part of the Government’s policy in respect of removing unemployment was merely big talk. Like its predecessors, it means to depend on local bodies to extricate the State Administration from a morass. Sir Joseph Ward is willing to give a subsidy of £25,000 to the Auckland City Council for public works in relief of unemployment, the grant to he on the basis of £ for £. Thus the onus of relieving Auckland’s unemployed has been adroitly thrown on the Mayor and his old and new colleagues. It looks like a great chance for Mr. Baildon, in the flush of his triumph, to prove the mettle of his enterprises and justify liis re-election as a minority Mayor.