The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1930 ~ RELIEF FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 972, 15 May 1930, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1930 ~ RELIEF FOR THE UNEMPLOYED

EXPERIENCE teaches politicians as well as all others with a Lt lack of wisdom. The United Cabinet, in virtually full session at Rotorua yesterday, restrained its talk on the difficult subject of unemployment. Instead of vain boasting and a vaulting optimism, the Government was content to promise an early . material reduction” in the Dominion total of unemployed. Eet it be hoped that this verbal moderation was the beginning of a new poliey of common sense on the vexatious question. Cabinet decided to make provision without delay for the absorption of an additional fifteen hundred men on pnhlie works and afforestation. This will reduce by about half the present aggregate of registered applicants for heavy work. The net total of these registrations at the State bureaux at present is 2,954. While credit is due to the Ministry for realising and meeting the necessity of providing employment for able-bodied men who are fit and willing to work hard instead of living on charity, which in such circumstances cannot be otherwise than demoralising, the Government’s commendable decision will not lepresent so great a material reduction as.it may be tempted to claim. The registrations of unemployed as disclosed at last by the Prime Minister refer only to applicants fit for heavy work. There remains unsolved and not yet even considered the more difficult problem of providing relief work for skilled and unskilled persons who are unable to find employment within their physical capacity, to say nothing at all about their industrial or commercial ability. Most unfortunately it is this class for which so little has ever been done in all the State’s unemployment relief schemes. In Auckland alone there are hundreds of applicants for employment who physically are unable to do heavy labouring work, not even the planting of trees. They are the victims of a system of what may be termed middle-high education without much opportunity for making good use of their scholastic training. The country is spending millions of pounds annually on the output of well-educated boys and girls for many of whom there are no places these days in industry and commerce. For example, except among electricians and jockeys, there is no trade in New Zealand averaging more than one apprentice to every six males employed. There is nothing more preposterous than’tjiat proportion anywhere in the whole industrial world. No wonder parents are at their wits’ end in respect of the vital question of findingoccupations for their children after school age. And this parental anxiety will persist and become ever more acute so long as politicians and loquacious importers insist on the fallacy that land settlement alone will solve the problem of unemployment. What is wanted more than anything else in a politically-muddled Dominion is a rapid expansion of local manufactures and the development of skilled industry. The country goes on spending at least £10,000,000 a year on the importation of goods which easily could he manufactured at very little higher cost in New Zealand factories. Whatever else may he said about unemployment, it cannot now be claimed complacently that its incidence merely is seasonal. In the worst of the initial post-war years the registration of applicants for employment totalled 1,097, while 4,878 men were then, in 1921, employed on public works. Last year the registrations numbered 2,975 at midwinter, and /there were 13,819 employees on public works. Today, the number of applicants for heavy work is 2,954, with the worst period of winter still to come. Thus it is clear that, in spite pf the expenditure of nearly one and a-half million sterling on relief works, unemployment is more severe than in the slump years following on the destructive war. In the face of that disconcerting fact, it is surprising to observe so many representative men obdurately refusing to encourage greater development of manufacturing industries. They prefer, to plod along in old ruts while thousands of young New Zealanders, exceptionally well educated, are doomed to periodic unemployment and depression. It has been announced that Cabinet has under consideration other schemes for the absorption of the unemployed; also that the Minister of Labour, whose administrative service, so far, has been extraordinarily weak, may lift the ban on the publication of unemployment registrations. There will be no solution of the problem until the Government and the people together realise the real extent of their difficulties and determine in a practical way to overcome them by a more vigorous exercise of self-reliance and enterprise in local industry. A VIKING’S LAST ADVENTURE IT has been well said that the late Dr. Fridtjof Nansen would have found no peers among the greatest Vikings. Great men are deserving of brave words and, if the veteran Norwegian explorer who has embarked upon the last, inevitable adventure has been given a noble epitaph, it is but his due. Yet he would have been the last to claim such a tribute, for Nansen—Nansen of the North, as he was known to his countrymen, and to all Europe—was the most modest of men. Dr. Nansen was one of a hardy, pioneer school, fast disappearing in an age of airplanes, radio communication, big ships and big finance. Time has proved that, when necessity arises, men of his calibre can still be found, for the spirit of hardy enterprise is not a hall-mai»k of any single generation, yet the fact remains that Nansen, his contemporaries, and his colleagues undertook Polar exploration in an age when this was an adventure indeed—a challenge to the unknown, and a gamble with long odds. Moreover, the tall, slim Norwegian, his strength of body and will masked by the sombre kindliness of the student,*did not count his usefulness to his country at an end when a new era superseded the old. Part of his time he gave to political and humanitarian work, but the remainder was devoted to the further conquest of the Far North and, on the eve of his death, he was planning a Polar flight in a large dirigible with Dr. Hugo Eckener as its captain. In this, as in other respects, Nansen was one with his equally famous contemporary, Amundsen. In 1882 Nansen, then 21 years of age, caught his first glimpse of Arctic ice. He made other journeys of a like nature, includingone across Greenland on ski, But it was not until 1892 that he embarked upon his major emprise—a dash to the North Pole. The adventures of his little ship the Fram were given to the world by Lieutenant Hjalmar Johansen and provided a remarkable record of Arctic achievement. It is true that Nansen failed to reach the Pole, hut he penetrated farther than any of his predecessors had done, and returned with valuable contributions to scientific knowledge. Nansen the explorer must be honoured, also, as Nansen the statesman and humanitarian. His work at the council table of the League of Nations and on the repatriation committees of the Geneva Conference has been of great importance to Norway, while his whole-hearted labours on behalf of Christian refugees in Russia and Asia Minor were typical of the man. Of a cei> tainty, Norway has lost, one of the greatest of her Viking sops.