No Need for Doles

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 6

No Need for Doles

OUR PURCHASERS’ CHOICE Wages Cheques or Charity Chits ? THE resumption of the debate in Parliament on the Unemployment Bill indicates that we must now be ready to submit to a poll-tax on all adult males, so that our idle workers may not stai've, but will receive a “sustenance’ allowance, or, in plainer terms, a weekly “dole” to keep body and soul together while their compulsory idleness lasts.

As in the case of Australia, which is now passing through a severe economic crisis through over-borrow-ing and over-importation. New Zealand has drifted into similar trouble in a milder degree through exports of foodstuffs being insufficient to pay for imports and meet liabilities on loans. In a nutshell, we have been borrowing too much abroad, importing too much, and manufactuing too little for ourselves WAGES OR DOLES? So far attempts have been made to avert the poverty and distress which follow as dismal spectres in the wake of unemployment, by providing relief works, mostly of a nonproductive kind, at a cost of a million a year to the national and local treasuries, money mostly borrowed abroad and added to our external debts which must be repaid by our exports no matter how much prices of staple products may drop. Added to this million of money a year, there have been heavy calls on our private and public charities to meet cases of absolute want arising mostly from the same evil of idle breadwinners. Many of these are skilled artisans and fine workers, who could make good wages at their trade if only their fellow-New Zealanders would buy our own made goods in preference to imported ones. These workers do not want “doles” or miserable pittances from unemployment relief funds, nor do they wish for their wives to haunt our charitable aid offices or religious organisations for the means of obtaining vital necessities. THE BUYERS’ CHOICE There will be a general outcry over

the levying of a head tax, which will fall equally on the manhood of the country, to pay for the folly of importing from outside what we could make here with our idle workers, and the buying public has the remedy in its own hands of avoiding such taxation by purchasing New Zealand-made goods all the time and every time an occasion oilers. Then, instead of paying a paltry dole and destroying our workers’ chance of becoming prosperous, happy and contented, we will open the doors of our factories, foundries and workshops to busy workers earning good wages producing the goods we need, and adding a much-needed increase to our national production of wealth. CHARITY OR WAGES CHEQUE By diverting our trade from outside workers to our own kith and kin right here in New Zealand, we are providing the fund from which our manufacturers draw their weekly wages cheque to pay their employees, and it is the buyer of goods who originally fills our workers’ pay envelopes. Which is the more sensible and profitable process; to buy goods made here from our own materials, and so enable our workers to earn good wages, or to throw them out of employment by sending our work out of the country, and then dip into our pockets for a national muster to hand them a meagre allowance to cover their bare sustenance? WHERE EVERYONE BENEFITS By buying New Zealand-made-goods we are not only providing employment for our skilled and trained operatives, but contributing to an ever-spreading circular wave of prosperity which

benefits and uplifts everyone. Th skilled tradesmen need unskilled workers to assist them. They new the raw materials procured for them by other skilled and unskilled labour They need cans and crates and boxes and labels. They provide work f or carters and other distributors. A!’ these workers, and others even more remotely connected with the goods buy, earn more money and spend more money. The shopkeepers sell more goods, and order more goods. Those uho on the dole could only buy the barest necessities, when working f u u‘ time can spend fully and freely, and enjoy their share of pleasure ' and luxuries if they fspl so inclined; or if thrifty they can build and furnish their own homes, spending more money and adding more and more to that wave of prosperity in the stagnant pond of industry, the limits and benefits of which spread far bevond our power to trace. PROSPERITY AND POSTERITY It is not difficult to see how voluntarily placing an embargo on outside goods, when those made by our own labour are procurable, must mean a speedy return of prosperity, but it also means a permanent and evergrowing benefit to the country in the years to come. It will provide new and welcome channels for employment for those reaching the threshold of working life, and enable them to play their rightful part in adding to the wealth of the country, and doing their share in developing its infinite resources. Surely every true citizen must have an earnest desire to do all he can to make his fellow-worker; prosperous and contented, and do hi; utmost to provide profitable employ, ment for those who follow us. There is no real and lasting cure tor unemployment hut productive work, and the New Zealander who is not producing wealth or rendering useful service to the country must be riding on the backs of those who are. So man worth his salt wishes to live a parasitic existence. He does not want doles or cnarfcy. To be a man, and live as a man, he must needs plathis part as a useful citizen. When we send our work to other countries we deny our workers that right, and are responsible for the depression ani unemployment which blights our workers to the paint of despair. Keep our workers busy producing by buying their goods. New Zealand is Your Country. Why not Support its Workers with Orders to Make Cx>ds instead of Orders on Charities and Doles?