The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1930 MONEY FOR PUBLIC WORKS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 967, 9 May 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1930 MONEY FOR PUBLIC WORKS

OIR JOSEPH WARD again has money a-plenty for State enterU prise on public works. The latest New Zealand loan issue in Eondon was a splendid success. With a commendable moderation on the part of a national treasurer who did not hesitate on the r,™ OUt , ei " hte cn months ago to make one bite of rm.' U: ° 0 ’ ooo ’ only £ 5,500,000 was besought of British investors, the response was appreciable. Close on twenty-two thousand potential lenders eagerly applied for scrip, and" their offerings totalled nearly £20,000,000. The Dominion at the moment is the most popular borrower in the world. As a shipping representative who has just returned from England has said, “they seem at Home to be as proud of us as if they were parents with a very fine child. New Zealand, in the Earl of Birkenhead’s phrase, is The darling of the Empire.” - . 'V and more of the same sort of praise, is as stimulating as it, is flattering. If the Government should feel disposed to associate itself and record of administrative service with the spontaneous and super-abundant yield of the London loan, it could claim fairly that its credit appears to be better abroad than n J: , Tn a °y case > the Administration is in a position to spend *,4,500,000 on railway construction, half a million on hydroelectric power works, and a similar amount on railway improvement, all out of the new loan. Therefore the Government will have no difficulty in financing public works this year, although the total allocations are a million pounds less than the allocated sum out of last year’s £7,000,000 loan. But the end of its embarrassment is hot in sight. On*the contiary, anxiety looms larger than ever in respect of meeting an insistent demand for more and ever still more unemployment relief. The plight of the unemployed in Auckland alone is bad enough to call for serious and immediate consideration. It is true that one section of the community—the section that has had no practical experience of enforced idleness and social distress—would like the public to believe that unemployment is by no means acute, or failing that belief, to agree that nothing should be said about it in order to avoid the danger of depressing business. This cautious and somewhat callous argument ignores the fact that business is depressed because unemployment is rife and certainly a great deal worse than the extent which is cheerfully described by the employed as seasonal lack of work. It is the better wisdom to recognise the evil of unemployment and make an heroic effort to reduce it at least to nothing worse at its worst than a social irritation. Unfortunately, the Government deliberately screens the truth concerning the real extent of unemployment, and lulls a complacent people by announcing periodically here and there, wherever the demand for relief is clamorous, that arrangements have been made to employ fifty men on this job, and a hundred more on some other public work. No one outside the incompetent Administration knows whether or not all the proclaimed arrangements have been carried out. And the number of unemployed throughout the Dominion remains an unknown total. This shields the Government from a disclosure of its inability to fulfil its foolish promise eight months ago to banish unemployment within five weeks, but it also may encourage a mischievous exaggeration of the problem. It is to he regretted that the Ministry does not include a first-class administrator able to deal adequately and constructively with unemployment. An urgent request has been made to the Prime Minister by Mr. M. J. Savage, Labour M.P. for Auckland West, to call Parliament together for the purpose of doing something to relieve a desperate situation. The telegraphed plea represents despair. It does not hold much hope for the unemployed. Parliament had ample opportunity last year to deal with the problem of unemployment, and neglected it. Legislators swallowed the promise of a magical remedy. Now it is suggested that if all the members of Parliament were to assemble as a Council of the State they might discover a better remedy. The idea looks like an optimistic dream. New Zealand does not possess a Mussolini. Something good may come out of the projected meeting of a full Cabinet of Ministers at Rotorua next week, when “important matters will he considered.” Hope never deserts politicians, but the people are beginning to lose their hope in the United band, whose promises to do wonderful things have become as broken reeds. The Government should realise that the country’s generous patience is almost exhausted. There is much useful work to be done. The main highway south of Auckland is in such a condition as to provide employment for five hundred men. THE PRICE OF PROGRESS COMMENTS of the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, in a motoring case at Palmerston North have directed attention to the many dangers at present surrounding the use of the roads. His Honour stated that the public would not stand the increasing toll of motor accidents for ever, hut it is difficult to see in wliat ay the public as an abstract force can exert its influence. A great many accidents are due to recklessness, carelessness, intoxication of drivers, and other unnecessary causes, but in others something more—perhaps what is called luck, good or had—takes a hand. At certain points of the road it is necessary for only tv o motorists to arrive simultaneously at a given point, and an accident is unavoidable. This principle applies also to accidents at railway crossings which have taken a disastrous toll in recent - ears, and it is as difficult in the one class of accidents as in the other to see what control the public has over their incidence. the punishments rightly imposed by the law may he a deterrent m cases of recklessness and intoxication, but obviously they can have no effect upon the large class of accidents where neither driver is at fault, and the blame may simply be attributed to conditions existing at the time and place. There is a far larger class of these accidents than the public, or even its legal advisers, probably realise. In certain circumstances it is just as easy for the careful driver to have an accident as it is for the man who cliives without thought of others on the road and, though statistics which the Minister of Transport, Mr. W. A. Veitch, proposes to gather will probably have the effect of emphasising this point, they will not necessarily make it any easier for Mr. Veitch to execute liis task of creating a millenium in the domain of transport. The fact is that increased casualties among users of the load are part of the price that must be paid for progress. The motor-car is a fast-and convenient means of getting about, and *l* v * ew its enormous popularity it was hardly to be expected that conditions on the roads would remain as they were in the days of the horse and buggy. The remedy for the accidents is not to he gained by imposing thoughtless regulations, or in punishing a driver for what in 9,999 cases out of 10,000 would be a perfectly safe and legitimate proceeding. To make the roads safe the traps that beset them should be eliminated. Narrow bridges, blind crossings, awkward corners, and danger-spots such as abound on the Great South Road beyond Papaknra, must be replaced by better facilities. That this is the first responsibility of those charged with preserving the public safety is the conclusion reached in Britain and the United States, and in the fullness of time the same principle will no doubt be appreciated here.