The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1923. UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1923. UNEMPLOYMENT.

For the cause Chat lacks assistant*, For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance. And the good that we can do.

At the present moment the most serious practical problem of the hour in Britain is the question of unemployment. I A number of men and women, variously estimated at from one to two millions, have been for some time past out of work, or at best able to secure only I intermittent employment, with the neces- ; sary result that poverty and destitution are widespread, and the social discontent which is their invariable concomitant is constantly assuming more serious proportions. Last year a committee, composed of leading economists, statisticians and business men, undertook ari inquiry into industrial conditions, with special reference to unemployment, and their report, recently issued, is a very interesting production. It shows, among other things, that this unemployment, which is a direct outcome of the war and war conditions, has amounted, in industrial occupations properly so-called, to over 22 per cent of the whole available supply of labour. In other words, "a fifth or more of the industrial power of the country is running to waste." In spite 1 of these deplorable conditions it is some consolation to learn from this report that "the widespread physical distress which was the normal accompaniment of unemployment in pre-war depressions has been prevented." But how? By a system of unemployment relief, which in the period of 1921-3 entailed the distribution of about one hundred millions I a year among a couple of million families. This state of things is so absolutely unprecedented that it demands some serious attention. For a long time it has been a fixed conviction with the majority of thoughtful people at Home that State relief of any sort must inevitably tend to demoralise the workers. The full discussion of this dictum would carry us back'at once to the Poor Law of 1834; but it is sufficient here to observe in passing that the object of that once notorious statute was not simply to pre- ' vent the further demoralisation of the workers by withdrawing out-door relief . and grants in aid of wages, but also to . make the receipt of charity so burden- - some and humiliating as to ensure that all self-respecting men and women would l;e prepared to accept any kind of work, at any rate of wages, rather than "go on the Union" or enter the workhouse. To ■ a considerable extent the Poor, Law of i 1834 achieved its double purpose; and r this success naturally helped to confirm ' the Laissez Faire tradition, so dear to the English mind, that the State can only do harm by "interfering" with the normal relations existing between ' ( Capital and Labour, more especially in regard to wages. On this vitally important topic the report of the Unemployment Committee makes a moet significant comment. In the opinion of the Committee the relief afforded by the State within the past three years to- the unemployed has not undermined the character or the self-respect of the wageearners. "The great discovery has been made," says the report, "that a system of allowances by whdeh the worst effects of distress are prevented does not necess arily involve widespread demoralisation." Anyone in the least familiar with the social and economic literature which • bears on this great industrial problem may well feel surprise that a representative and responsible body of Englishmen > should reach this conclusion. But the report on this point is so precise and definite that it leaves no possible room for doubt or misapprehension. "It is a crude psychology," it proceeds, "that > attributes the demoralisation that sometimes came from unemployment solely to 3 the receipt of maintenance without - work." 'Maintenance without work, it poirfts out, with a distinct touch of irony, is "a condition not confined to the unemployed members of the wageearning class"; and it adds that "however demoralising it may be in the long run, it is at any rate less demoralioing than unemploj-ment without maintenance." The report finds the real source of social and industrial demoralisation J in "the loss of regular useful occupation to exercise a man's powers and sustain his self-respect." In spite of the Laissez Faire tradition, the Unemployment Committee has thus broken entirely away from the time-honoured belief in the corrupting influence of State aid for the workers; and this surely marks a most important epoch in our industrial history. Nor would it be difficult to find a J great deal of contemporary evidence j tending toward the same end. For many j relatively conservative writers and j thinkers have been driven to the concluj sion that the grave problem of Unemi ployment cannot be solved by the un- , f j aided action of the Law of Supply and Demand. Two years ago Professor I Ramsay Muir drafted for the Manchester ! Liberals a programme which recognised ! that a ''fioating body of unemployed" is ! indispensable for the maintenance and ! the expansion of all industries, and drew I the logical inference that as Capitalism ! is thus in a sense based on Unemploy- ! ment it should join hand 3 with the State j to support the unemployed. The idea* ■ that it would be equitable to secure ■ maintenance for all workers, employed j or not, by the combined efforts of the I State and the employer, is steadily

I gaining ground, and the report of the % Unemployment Committee, by diasi- * pating some of the superstitious rever- ,j ence so- long displayed for Laissez Faire, j should certainly add strength and energy s to the forces working in this direction. {