RECKLESS ASSERTIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 June 1921, Page 4

RECKLESS ASSERTIONS.

The reply given by the Acting-Premier (■Sir Francis Bell) to the charges made by the Labor members of Christdhurch that the Government was deliberately creating unemployment in order to force down wages, and. of dismissing men to that end, was dignified and convincing. These extremists appear to concentrate their energies on seeking opportunities to make political capital out of anything on which they can lay their hands, but they must be at a low ebb as regards resources when they make such palpably foolish attacks on the Government as the one in question. By a distortion of circumstances, and an abstention from ascertaining the facts, the Government is charged with an organised attack on the workers, the truth being that Ministers are doing all in their power to find work for the unemployed. The law of supply and demand has now entered the stage when the supply is greater than the demand, and the chief cause of this change is that the work has been compulsorily reduced owing to the financial stringency and high wages. The Government can no more perform miracles than can a private employer, so that if work is to be found for all the unemployed there must be some relief from the financial stringency, or a fall in wages. If taxation is to be reduced—as it must be—there must be the strictest economy exercised by the Government. That is very different to organising a conspiracy against the workers. If any one item of the accusations is more reprehensible than another it is the dragging of the returned soldiers into the controversy by the statement that they are being offered work by the Government at sixpence a day “below the normal rates for general workers.” The extremists have no more sympathy for returned soldiers than they have for capitalists—as was abundantly proved during the war—but if is a case of any port ip a storm. The Minister might have severely reprimanded these reckless trouble-raisers, but with commendable restraint he merely refers to their statements as “manifestly absurd,” and as having a political object—and that is exactly what it is. The public will not •be deceived in this matter, nor will the great body of honest workers, who realise that present conditions are such as to produce world-wide unemployment. They have revelled in good times, and should be sports enough to take the rough with the smooth.