THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7954, 1 February 1906, Page 7

THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED.

In the Nineteeith Century, the Rev. Wilson Carlile, founder of the Oburch Army, relates the results of his personal observations of the methods successfully employed in Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Germany for dealing with the problem of the unemployed.? In Belgium, for example, where, a 8 in other northern European countries, a tramp or a beggar is a rarity, an excellent system has been adopted by the establishment of a colony at Met-aplas, near Antwerp, containing 5,000 persons, of whom 3,000 consist of b«ggars, tramp and petty thieves, and the organisation of the place is prbnounced to be perfect. A wilderness of a«md has been transformed into a place of fruitful and flourishing woodland. "Churches, schools, barracks, workshops have been built, and the colony grows and manufactures practically all Si'Bt it consumes." The -men are paid a small weekly wage, a portion of which is allowed to be ex pended on "luxuries," and the balance is banked. The coat per -nan works out at 3s 4d a week, as against 16s in England, "the secret of the low expenditure being the principle of making the inmates erect their own buildings, grow their own food, and seeing that each man works for his food before he gets it. The excess of the cost over earnings is defrayed by the State, the commune and the municipality in equal shares." At Veonbuiren, near Meppel, in Holland, is a 1 'Colony for beggars and drunkards, numbering 3,000 in all. "They are •engaged in gardening, forestry, and agriculture, as well as in various manual trades, and receive a small wage." Thw colony is divided into eighteen separate homesteads, each under the charge of a separate farmer, and there are similar institutions at Frederickswud, in Holland, at Alderdomsbjem, in Denmark, and at Luherheim and Schaferhof, in Germany; men being set to work in most of these at that for which they are most fit, and are paid for it according to results, instead of being kept on the English plan at one dead level of unremunerative and heart-breaking labour; and, adds Mr Carlilo, "one could not fail to be struck by the fact that in these Continental institutions the inmates are producers of wealth as well as consumers."