Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1929. LABOUR AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 200, 10 June 1929, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1929. LABOUR AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

The now Labour Administration in Britain lias placed the solution of the unemployment question in the forefront of its policy, and the Prime Minister has stated that already a scheme is under way. The duty of dealing with this) great problem, which has taxed the brains of some of the ablest statesmen in the country, has been entrusted primarily to Mr Thomas, and the constituencies will await with considerable interest the announcement of the details of his plan. It was stated the other day that Mr Thomas believes that the revival of the Trade Facilities Act would enable railway companies to undertake schemes for electrical equipment and other methods of modernisation. He has indicated, too, the necessity for a new railway ring around London. Another scheme is that of making more adequate State pension provision for men of from sixty to sixty-five years of age, so as to remove them altogether from industry, thus providing work for younger men. In view of Mr Snowden’s complaint the other day that the Liberals had “pinched” Labour’s platform in this connection it is interesting to recall that the proposals put forward by Mr Lloyd George cover a number of schemes of public works, which in the firsttwo years would absorb some six hundred thousand workers. These schemes include: Reconstruction of roads and .bridges, housing, telephone development, electrical development, land cfrainage and London passenger transport. In addition large contributions were anticipated from the appropriation of the betterment value. On the other hand, telephone, electricity and London passenger developments represent merely .the acceleration of proved and sound commercial propositions, where, if any immediate temporary help were required, it would only represent the carrying forward for a few years of a charge which the traffic would bear. This is an apparently attractive programme, but the Industrial Transference Board, which is vitally concerned with the employment question, is not at all sanguine as to it-si success. In a report on the subject the Board says the sclieme involves for the most part merely the creation by the State of a temporary, artificial and substituted employment market; and that it may, in certain cases, produce assets of lasting value is no answer! to this criticism, for there are many ways of increasing the capital value of the country’s resources if money is available. “We have reached the conclusion, therefore,” the report says in a final summary, “that it is impracticable to look to such schemes for any effective contribution, and that undue emphasis on their possibilities only serves to distract attention from the true difficulties of the situation and from the unheroic and actual possibilities of solution.” In short, the scheme is one for getting money for nothing.