The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 18. THE PERENNIAL PROBLEMS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 59, 18 June 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 18. THE PERENNIAL PROBLEMS.

The idea of locating a 'billet and obtaining a man to fill it has led to fortune for many men, for unfortunately there always seem to ibe more men than billets. The real fact is that there is enough work in the world to keep every man employed and every woman happy, but personal greed, unfairness of distribution and unfitness help to form the unemployedl class. New Zealand has a system of Labor Exchanges under the management of the Government that is most helpful in dealing with unemployment. That it must necessarily be abused no one doubts, tout that, on the whole, the. system is a good one there can be no question. New Zealand has to face the problem of the unemployed and the problem of the unemployable, but the numbers dealt with are so small that the ■whole thing sinks into insignificance besides similar problems in older lands. For generations Britairi has fought to lessen the evil within its borders, by public and private means, but the conditions of life are such that it seems impossible to entirely eliminate distress, and to give to the people who are willing and able to -work, the reproductive toil necessary to their well-being. Other countries—notably the United Stateshave problems of the same kind, exceeding in vastness the one that Britain is trying to solve. The British Government undertook the task a while ago. of endeavoring to fit men to the billets that were available. It registered 270,000 men, it employed 104,000, it had 32,000 vacancies to fill, and it gave employment to 20,000 of them. It is, therefore, seen that the problem remains unsolved. This does not wait, and the youths grow to men. Yearly censuses of the unemployed prove that an enormous number of ■ men are workless, discontented, underfed and, therefore, a source of trouble. No nation works for its poor so strenuously or spends so much money on the amelioration of distress as the British, and yet Britain apparently is no nearer •its goal than it was a hundred years ago. The British Government is now spending £200,000 on labor exchanges per year; it intends to spend £1,325,000 in insurance against unemployment, and, besides this, nearly twenty million pounds per annum for the insurance against sickness and for social reforms generally. As long as the poor of Britain are as fatalistic as the' Hindoo, believing that as they were born so will they die, as long as the hulk of the land remains untenanted and held by one class, «s long as taxation rests lightly on the wealthy and is a burden to the poor, so long wail all the money spent on alleged amelioration of unemployment foe "thrown in the gutter." ißliminate personal greed, the' fatalism of the poor, and indiscriminate charity which 'begets pauperism, and you have at least the beginning of reform. But the way is so long that there seems no light at the far end.