Solving Unemployment

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 922, 15 March 1930, Page 6

Solving Unemployment

PRODUCTIVE WORK—NOT DOLES

Increase the National Income

IN all the discussion that is going on about the problem, of * unemployment and how to relieve the position, sight is often lost of the essential fact that the only lasting solution and permanent cure for the evil is by providing productive work for the idle ones and by so doing, increasing the income of the communitv.

An individual may live on his income or his capital, or he may be supported by others, but as a community we derive our national income from one common fund which is made up by our production of wealth in all its various forms. The greater that production of wealth the greater the prosperity and development of the country, and the most valuable form of wealth produced is that containing the greatest amount of profitable labour. The products of least value are raw materials and other stuffs in the production of which there is but little labour employed and that mostly of the unskilled type. A country devoted largely to the production of raw materials and food stuffs can never rank very high among the nations of the world. The highest types are those in which the arts and crafts are most highly developed. The most valuable products of the country are its manufactured goods on account of the large amount of labour concentrated in

them, either by handcraft or machinery which is labour in a mechanical form. The existence and continuance of so much unemployment in our midst is almost entirely due to our neglect of 1 the most profitable form of production in our factories, foundries. and workshops. With many of our agricultural and pastoral industries we find those seasonal occupations which call for a big rush of labour at certain periods and then a long spell between seasons when there is no work available. In our manufacturing industries employment with normal production is constant and regular, and until our local industries are in a position to supply the whole of our internal needs our industrial plants should never be idle or running on short time. Yet there is scarcely a factory or workshop in the Dominion running to full capacity now. SUSTAINING OURSELVES Every citizen with an average capacity for clear thinking must realise the absurdity of our boot factories, woollen mills, clothing factories, and other establishments turn-

I ing out necessities o£ life, being p ar . ; tially idle while we are importing ! goods to the value of many million pounds every year. There are many | trained and skilled workers from in. numerable branches of industry in the ranks of our small army of unemployed. but only because the work ; they could do so well with profit to themselves and the community generally is now being given to foreign workers and others overseas. Every idle artisan who can find no place at a work bench means a loss to our national income and a loss in our production of wealth, and every million pounds' worth of goods imported which we could make for ourselves means a loss of a million from our community income. That is why we are poor ard afflicted with so much unemployment today. WAGES, NOT DOLES After all. New Zealand is our country. Why, then, are so many people j so indifferent or prejudiced as to re- | fuse support to our own industries? ! It should not really be necessary for | our Governor-General, or the leaders j of all our political parties, to have ; to urge ou the people their duty to • support the industries which give such j valuable support to the income of the i community. Yet we find so many | people who would sooner pay their , duty on foreign goods than do their duty to their fellow workers here by buying their products. The skilled craftsman does not want doles, either as a right under some compulsory insurance scheme against unemployment, or as an act of charity from public or private funds. What our idle tradesmen want is productive work in their own industries, with regular and full wages in the pay envelope every week. Those pay envelopes can only be kept filled by the purchasers of his products. While you give preference to the goods of outsiders you keep our own workers unemployed. After all, it is Your Country. Support its Industries.