THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1908. THE UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9161, 7 August 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1908. THE UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM.

There is no question but that there are a good many men out of employment in the Dominion, and that there is some prospect of the number increasing. Everyone deplores that it should be nossible in this country for even a very limited number of intelligent, able bodied men willing to work to be faced with a condition of affairs approaching semi-starvation. Everyone, of course, deplores the fact, but no one need be surprised. If the Government and the Labour Unions pursue the same mad policy for the next few years that they have done in the past, the position will grow much more acute instead of better. Employers engaged in the different industries of the country have been held out as the natural enemies of the workers, and agitators in Unions have never been wanting to stir up strife between employer and employee. It nas been quite common for some years past—"quite the fashion," it might be said —to regard an employer as anything else than the friend of the worker. The

Government have wasted precious time, when far-reaching legislation and vigorous administration would have been invaluable, in passing laday legislation, and pandering to the crowd, talking the while a very large number of excellent platitudes. The workers, meanwhile, having been provided with an instrument for the forcing up of wages, were extremely happy, not to say jolly, and set to work right merrily to force up wages to the highest possible pitch. But the whole, situation was much too artificial to last. To-day we have high wages and men out of employment all over the country. The scarcity of money has but to last ] a little longer, and we shall see, not j hundreds, but thousands of me! 1 , in need of employment. If the industrial employer has no reason to thank the Government, have the workers any more reason to be grateful? High wages-are all very well when the cost of living is cheap, and when there is plenty of employment, but high wages with the cost of living high, and employment scarce,is quite another matter! The worker, whether he be an employer or an employee, has to thank the Government for the present situation of affairs, for we live in a country that possesses a most inequitable system of taxation, where the progress of land settlement is a farce, and where railway construction by no means receives the attention that should be given to it in the interests of the country. Economical but vigorous administration, close settlement of the land, rapid , railway construction, a cessation in the work of creating departments, and a fair system of taxation, would cause workers of every class in "God's Own Country" to rejoice that they lived in it. v