The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1929 THE SEARCH FOR WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 773, 20 September 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1929 THE SEARCH FOR WORK

’THE Labour Government in Great Britain is busy at emphasising * an old truth about unemployment. This is the fact, as asserted by the Lord Privy Seal, after an official visit to Canada in the role of a political commercial traveller, that “there is no remedy for unemployment by artificial means.” A sum of over £500,000,000 has been spent already in Great Britain since the war on the relief of unemployment by the artificial means of a national system oE unemployment insurance, but not a single pound in that colossal expenditure has contributed any influence at all toward the cure of a chronic industrial disease. The nation still supports in insured idleness more than a million potential workers. Moreover, this support at its best is merely misery without its roughest edge. It lias been argued frequently by those who want to make bad conditions look better that the British army of unemployed includes a large number of unemployables. That contention is fallacious. The insured unemployed must first qualify as workers and registered employables before they can receive relief from the national unemployment insurance fund. The unemployables are maintained out of poor-law relief funds on the same principle of charity as that practised in all humane countries on behalf of poverty-stricken men and women who are not able to earn their living. Such expenditure costs Great Britain annually just about the same amount of money as the sum spent on maintaining one of the most efficient armies in the world. The Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas, who is better known among industrial unionists as the “Minister of Employment” rather than by the confusing official title, Lord Privy Seal, has asserted that the real solution of the unemployment is to get customers. In order to secure more customers for British manufacturers Mr. Thomas took to Canada samples of British coal. And he got substantial orders. These, beyond doubt, spell some success for his novel mission, but the results, however good, will not solve the problem unless statesmen be able to .promote ways of action for stimulating private industry to the employment of more labour. Is it not reasonable to suggest that, if Great Britain in the past ten years had spent the unemployment insurance sum of £500,000,000 on the stimulation of private or even State industry, instead of squandering it more or less charitably on keeping men and women out of work, the nation would have been today less harassed by unemployment and loss of industrial trade? The attempt to cure unemployment by artificial means has been an extravagant experience, and manifestly a failure since the number of unemployed is as high at the end of an experimental decade as it was at its beginning. Palliatives, of course, cannot be avoided in times of pressing emergency and widespread misery, but it is surely a mockery of statesmanship or even common parish-pump politics to continue the process of industrial quackery. Unemployment relief works, unless confined to reproductive enterprises, are not of much good to any country afflicted with the blight of industrial depression and social misery. What is wanted is increased stimulus of progressive industry and private efficient enterprise. And the shortest cut to that desirable activity is by the way of substantial reduction of taxation. In this country at the moment, where political ineptitude is tolerated too easily, the Government actually increases taxation for the purpose of extending the practice of palliatives, while the Labour Party clamours for an early adoption of artificial means of solving a problem. In view of that sort of political service and lack of statesmanship, it is not surprising that processions of the unemployed have become common in Auckland, and that the Government with all the talents and promises is pathetically baffled. And a futile department reports consolingly that unemployment is worse in some other countries!