The Labour World.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4338, 19 November 1908, Page 2

The Labour World.

From cablegrams during the last few day's and by news from different parts of the Dominion, wc know that unemployment in England aud elsewhere is causing much suffering to manual toilers and anxiety to various Governments. That is a matter in which no right-minded person can fail to take a clay’s interest. If one member suffers, all suffer.

Very numerous and various things are causes of unemployment arid consequent poverty'. Some causes are natural and some are ar.ificial. The natural causes are mostly' unavoidable, but. the artificial are preventible in many instances. ■ Of the natural causes we may mention the following Drought in Australia has sometimes reduced farms that wore worth £60,000 to a mere trifle, because the green feed for sheep and cattle was all destroyed; the same cause in Bengal through the failure of a single rice crop, has pluuged millions of poor creatures into poverty and tens of thousands into premature graves. Russian peasantry have often suffered severely from draught, while, not long ago, in Spain a draught threw 200,000 men out of work and cost the authorities £1,500,000 in Charitable Aid So greatly' are we indebted to a bountiful Providence for genial rains, which no man can make, yet how unmindful we are of such blessings. Floods, too, have boon no less disastrous. In Spain about that time 50,000 persons were drowned; while in 1875 there were 20,000 drowned; and in 1889 atJohnstonville ii America, 6,000 persons were drowned. Fires account for immense losses of life and property. The writer saw the great fire in Tooley-street, London, in 1861, when £2,000,000 worth of property was destroyed in a night. In 1871 in Chicago 250 persons lost their lives in a fire which also destroyed£4,soo,ooo worth of property aud it rendered 90,000 homeless.

If we add to those causes changes of climate, blight, insect pests, earthquakes, l plagues, storms, volcanic eruptions, we see how many unpreventible causes of unemployment and poverty there are. We also see bow unwise it is always to blame capitalists when men are cut of work. We fiud, too, that there are many inequalities amongst races of men and individuals—mental, moral, physical and social, and unemployment and poverty result as a consequence. Nature seems to be “ red in tooth and j claw,” and the race seeius to be given to the swift and the battle to the strong. In the course of Nature millions of human beings seem to utterly fail through being too heavily handicapptd by an insenatible poison, and yet we cannot fail to trust that infinite wisdom is working out a beneficent purpose in the universe. That we are passing on from good to better all history and revelation shows. But whenjwe look at artifical causes of unemployment and poverty, we see how very much is left in our own hands and how that if we all did our duty the trials of life might be averted or ameliorated. Take war, for instance. How many' bread winners get killed ! What immense economic losses result from the obstruction of millions of men from industrial pursuits of production and the organising of them under militarism ! The war between North and South America in the sixties of last century cost £000,000,000. The late Russo - Japanese war cost the same amount. Even the Boer War cost £200,000,000. It is simply appalling to think of what might have been done with that money in education, indust ry r religion, charity*, and the general betterment of the conditions of the lives of manual and mental toilers, Truly “ wilful waste brings woeful want,” If we add to war the evils of trade rings, corners and trusts j also bad government, such as reduced the Sudan to want and misery, and often plunged Turkey, Russia, and South American States into want we see abundant causes of poverty. But there are yet to be added : changes of fashion, changes of trade routes, gambling, intemperance and improvidence. Ilonce we trace many unpreventible and some preventible causes of unemployment and poverty and in another article we will return to this subject and deal with remedies. Is there a solution of the problems of poverty and unemployment ?