The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1917. DEMOBILISATION.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 7 March 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1917. DEMOBILISATION.

("With which is incorporated The Taihapo Post and Waimarino News).

' The number of persons in England now paid out of Government funds who will be discharged after peace is assured is estimated by the Joint Labour Committee on Labour Problems After the War, at between six millions and eight millions, of whom seveneighths are men. This, it is said, represents about half the wage-earning population of Great Britain. If peace becomes assured this year what a prodigious, bewildering task will face the British authorities. Five or six millions of men will be without profitable employment, or with no employment at all. They willhave to be drafted into civil life again, and under most satisfactory circumstances it is estimated that the process of demobilisation will extend over many years; and this in spite of the fact that Great Britain has a Joint Labour Committee, whose sole duty is it is to go on organising and preparing for their most rapid absorption. B'ritain is not waiting to provide the machinery for coping with what is foreseen, but is organising, instituting and getting it into working order, so that delay may not contribute to hardship and panic. in proportion to population and means for dealing with the task of finding employment for the hundred thousands or so that may return, or find their way to these shores after the war, that of the New Zealand Government is as appallingly large as that of Britain. With a lawyer trying to solve so great a labour problem there need be no surprise that this country bas given but little evidence of its realisation of the greatness of the avalanche that it is 'loped will soon commence to roll this way. Britain is not leaving this extiemely vit.J matter to men versed in profert and wrangling. Her statesmen are calling into the service of the

country labour exchanges, which are being incre-<sed in number and accommodation, and which are working under the supervision of labour experts and unions. "We have here a

Discharged Soldiers' Information Department, whose duties are not very clearly denuded, but we are led to assume by the Minister in charge that this organisation is< to some extent responsible for the taking up of the on-coming flood into our ordinary civil life. We know that men ar e met as they return, and that they are welcomed and kind words are said to them, but every employer of labour knows from the number of applications he gets from returned soldiers for work, that our methods, even with th e present little dribble-drabble, are not effective. With the organisation now available the Department is probably doing its best, but Ave are reminded that it is certain that the country which is able to transfer its energies from war-work to peaceful arts in the shortest time will have a material advantage in the inevitable struggle for trade. There are men who foolishly hope that no matter how our production may lag for want of men being rapidly drafted into it "Trade within the Empire" will insure a market at highest prices. Some even assume that if a little is produced there will be a bigger demand for it. Produce must be put on foreign markets in the largest possible quantity or dealers cannot be bothered with it. South America told our fruit-growers that they must undertake to supply hundred thousand case lots or it was vain to look for a payable market in that direction. To do our duty to the returning men and to ourselves in keeping up the inflow of riches to this country we must increase our production, and we must manufacture —increase production to bring in more money and" extend our manufactures .so that we can keep it here as far as possible. Broadly this is the basis of all material progress in any young [country. Then it is of supreme importance that our hundred thousand returning soldiers should be put to producing or manufacturing in the quickest possible time. It is because there are no visible efforts of a comprehensive character in operation that we urge upon the Minister the advisability of calling into his service what existing labour organisations thee already are to assist him in this great and important work. He states laat the real strain on the Department will come when the forces are disbanded at the termination of war, ana men are returning to the Dominion at th'J rate of thousands a month. This task of immense magnitude is giving his Department anxious thought; there is some sort of scheme which he hopes will tide over the transition period, but all he says raises the fear that the scheme he has will prove hopelessly i inadequate'.' We quite realise that the problem is altogether too big for any ordinary individual to solve; it is a case for the best industrial organising talent the Dominion can furnisii to deal with. Land in New Zealand is the source of all our riches; it furnishes the life blood of our existence, and yet, hundreds of thousands of acres are. lying idle and nothing is being done to make them help materially in solving the trouble that is giving the Minister so much anxious thought. If he can only be led to think that in the Taihape district alone there is enough idle and partially idle land to comfortably settle a thousand families, there will be some hope that his Department will not be -crushed by the immense magnitude of its task. Soldiers are being given fre e tuition in all sorts of trades, but if production is not increased there can be no further demand for such trades. All real progress depends upon what we do with our land; if we allow it to lie idle there can be little or no progress, whereas if it is all made to produce, then will arise a national and healthy demand in all sorts of trade, and every branch of industry will flourish. It is for this reason that we urge the Minister to go to the land tor the chief means of solving the returning soldier problem, and for removing the anxious thought that is troubling his Department.