The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23. UNEMPLOYMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 122, 23 June 1909, Page 2

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23. UNEMPLOYMENT.

The most serious problem confronting New Zealand is the unusual dearth of employment, The cycle of depression that has swept over Europe and America during the, past two years is now being felt in a minor degree in New Zealand. Notwithstanding that this country weathered the financial storm, and has almost recovered its customary buoyancy, there is a natural tendency on the part of all employers of labor, and those with financial responsibilities, to go slow. Caution at the moment is the watchword of employers. The diflieulty is greatly accentuated by the fact that this period of excessive caution in industrial and commercial enterprise should arrive during the winter months of the year, when the demand on the breadwinners of the working classes is heaviest. It is quite useless to speculate regarding the causes of the present unemployment; slich argument will not give work to the workless, nor bring food to the hungry. We believe such depression as wc are experiencing is due to causes entirely beyond the ability of the Dominion to have prevented; it is the unfailing cycle of reaction that follows periods of much prosperity. That it will be but temporary and pass with the winter, there, is every reason to believe.

'Meantime, however, unemployment is greater throughout the country than lor many years past, and special efforts should and must be made to cope with it. Soup kitchens and charitable relief are not what is wanted; it is work. We have no sympathy with those smug and complacent individuals who are wont to loftily dismiss this problem to their own Satisfaction with such statements as are too often unwarrantably made: that so-and-so is looking for work and praying that he will not find it; that there is plenty of work in the country but men will not leave the towns, and so on. It is untrue and a foul slander on the great majority of workers, whose unemployment is due to causes over which they liave no control. That there are some unemployed who are not anxious for work is undoubted, but they arc in a mighty minority. It is equally idle to aver that there is plenty of work in the country. There is not. Statements have been made from time to time by local bodies and by the Farmers' Union that men have refused work, which consequently went a-begging. In every case which we were able to investigate, however, it was abundantly proved that the statements had been grossly exaggerated. Their publicity .1variably showed one thing also—that dozens of men immediately 'besieged those responsible for the statements, applying for the alleged work. And also, to take the case of this province, who could expect, say, a married man with his family in a town to accept work on the farms at the wages usually offering, and hope to pay his way! We do not say that the wages should be greater, for we are quite aware that the industry would not bear any appreciable in-

The Government seems to be alive to the necessity for providing remedial measures, and more employment is afforded at the moment on the public works than at any similar period. Work on railway construction works throughout the Dominion is to be energetically pursued, and some hundreds more men, married having preference, absorbed. To meet the unemployment of timber workers' due to the slackness of the saw-mill-ing industry, the Government is hading busbfelling work for at least 2,>0 bushnieii. It cannot be expected, however, that the Government should find work for all unemployed, and, wherever possible, loca'l bodies should endeavor to absorb the local unemployed. Owing no doubt in some measure to the recent reduction of hands on the lluiroa railway, but also to the general slackness', there is a considerable number of unemployed even in Tarnnnki, and close o.i fifty men, many of them married, have registered "out of work" at the Government Labor Bureau already this month. Many of these men have tramped from Wellington and other distant towns on a vain quest for work, and are practically penniless. Cannot something be done to provide employment on local public works of a permanent nature» The harbor loan works, unfortunately, arc not in a sullicicntly forward state to employ extra labor, while the borough has been reducing hands. Should there be any evidence of local distress resultant from unemployment, however, the buiough and adjoining local bodies should at once commence any necessary work within their districts instead of waiting for a more favorable opportunity.