The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1930 GETTING NOWHERE WITH RELIEF

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 925, 19 March 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1930 GETTING NOWHERE WITH RELIEF

AS far as unemployment relief is concerned the Auckland Hospital and Charitable Aid Board says it is getting nowhere. This confession was made by board members yesterday, and it was supported with evidence of a grievous position respecting the cost of alleviating social distress in the midst of gaiety and imported extravagance. There is so much anxiety over the situation that the board, in a mood of despair, seeks a conference of local bodies to consider the problem. Half of the board’s total fund for aiding indigent and unemployable folk, known best all over the world as “the poor that is always with us,” is being spent on providing charitable relief for persons who are perfectly fit to work, and who, because of inability to find employment, are becoming demoralised in acquiring habitual readiness to depend on charity. As one member of the board phrased it such expenditure is “simply throwing money into the tide.” There always lias been a tendency in Auckland to shirk facing the reality of serious unemployment, on the plea that even to talk about it depresses business and discourages enterprise. This plausible excuse for looking the other way has become as frayed as it is futile. So long as the canker of unemployment is at the root of industry, trade will not flourish. Th§ unemployed have little to spend, and most of their expenditure has to be provided by others to the detriment of the spending power of wage-earners. And the deceptive cry in New Zealand that many other countries are in a worse plight has contributed largely to the Dominion’s failure to reduce unemployment to that normal level which economists, working on paper, demonstrate as something essential in the law of supply a»d demand. So, in a general sense, those who are doing well and are free of financial worry have declared that the problem of unemployment will solve itself in time, while those without work learn to accept doles and clamour for more. It may be taken for granted that the Hospital Board knows through experience how serious unemployment is in Auckland, and also realises how futile its generous policy of relief has been in practice. To use its own language, an alarming state of affairs has been disclosed. “If in the present fine weather the unemployed are trooping in, what will be the position in the winter?” This question, as raised by the board’s chairman, Mr. W. Wallace, carries its own answer in the record of protracted and expensive experience. When winter comes the position will be very bad, indeed, unless a useless Government can recover the promised magic it lost so soon after its magical elevation into administrative power on sufferance. No one would wish to discourage the board in its hope of achieving some good by convening a conference of local bodies, but conferences these days merely show, almost without exception,® that in a multitude of counsellors there is little wisdom. They succeed best in spending public money or in wasting time on proving that everybody knows quite well what is wrong and that the worst trouble always is to find a practical remedy. Most of the local bodies in Auckland have not hesitated to exhaust their financial resources on the provision of unemployment relief works only to learn that the supply of such work increases the demand for it. The unemployed keep trooping in whether the weather be fine or foul. The Government has spent and largely squandered over a million pounds sterling on unemployment relief during the past twelve months, and the pleas for assistance still are so numerous and persistent that the Minister of Labour is terrified at the publication of the unemployed registrations. He keeps the statistics to himself as closely as he withholds his remedies or ideas about betterment. One of the worst causes of unemployment is the vast expenditure on imported goods which could and should be manufactured in New Zealand. What is wanted first is the restoration of local industry to prosperity, then the promotion of more and still more manufacturing industries. Financial conditions demand a rigorous restriction on the importation of luxuries and goods from labour-sweated countries. This is the time to make New Zealand goods, and place sturdy New Zealanders in modern factories instead of driving so many of them into charity queues and doss-houses.

WANTED—A CLEAN HARBOUR

JUST two years ago public apprehension was stirred by the disclosure of unsavoury conditions resulting from the discharge of sewage into the Auckland Harbour. Alarmed by authoritative statements that at times the pollution from the Orakei outfall could be traced all the way across to Rangitoto, and that at least one case of typhoid had been attributed to the eating of pipis from Mission Bay, the Harbour Board at that time discussed the problem, and urged upon the Drainage Board the necessity for improvement in conditions. In the meantime, however, nothing has been done, and yesterday the board received from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron a further intimation that unsatisfactory and apparently unhealthy conditions still exist. Although the vent from the Orakei pumping station is supposed only to be opened on a falling tide, it has long ’been apparent that the discharge sometimes lingers in the harbour. The Yacht Squadron has cited occasions when the water right along the Orakei shor§ has been disagreeably polluted. Not only yachtsmen, but even people on shore, are sometimes made aware of these unpleasantnesses. The pollution is no fault of the engineers or the operators at the station, which is a model of efficiency and hygienic cleanliness; but obviously the present system of dealing with sewage has its grave defects. The thought that the harbour waters are polluted is extremely distasteful just now, when hundreds people daily are bathing from the beaches on both sides of the harbour, and when a fine new waterfront promenade to serve new harbour-side suburbs is just being completed. As the Drainage Board’s engineer will soon return from abroad with new ideas on up-to-date methods of sewage disposal, the Harbour Board in the meantime intends to content itself with a-more or less formal note to the Drainage Board. The time seems opportune, however, for some more vigorous reminder. The existence of the pollution has been known now for at least two years, ever since Dr. Chesson, with the full responsibility of a medical man and of liis post as Medical Officer of Health, drew public attention to the situation in March, 1928. Under the circumstances there seems little excuse for further procrastination. The very fact that the Drainage Board has a representative overseas gathering data is an admission that its methods are ineffective, if not inefficient. The chairman of the Drainage Board is the Mayor of Auckland. It is time he got something done,