VIEWS OF CORRESPONDENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 12

VIEWS OF CORRESPONDENTS.

PERMANENT FUND SUGGESTED. "A.W." writes: While the public conscience is awakened to the undeserved suffering caused by unemployment, and while machinery is in existence for collecting funds, would it not be possible to carry the appeal past the alleviation of immediate needs? What is wanted is a large reserve fund (after the manner of the Patriotic Fund) which could be placed at interest and be available for the charitable organisations and for providing work in future periods of depression. Remembering the splendid response made to the appeal for patriotic funds in wartime, this should not be impossible of achievement. None of us could eat a meal while hungry humanity watched us through the windows, but unless suffering is actually in sight we easily persuade ourselves it does not exist. Future generations will look back on a period when so-called Christian communities allowed men and their families to suffer for lack of work much as we look back on the horrors of the child labour and chain gang days. Many of the coloured races to whom we send missionaries share with their brothers to the last crust. Every human being born into the world is entitled to subsistence from the world. The earth and the fullness thereof are not the property of any one section of the community. In return each owes to the common weal whatever he can contribute in labour of body or brain, or the use of his accumulated capital. While economists are wrestling with the problem of breaking up the regularly recurring cycles of "boom" and "slump" periods in trade we can take the same measures to help the soldiers of production as we willingly took for soldiers of destruction. Let us carry this appeal through until we have established a fund so large that the distressful conditions now existing may never again be a blot on our city. The suggestion of collecting all unwanted jewellery put forward by Mr. J. M. Saunders and E.M.M. is a good one. Most women have such possessions they would gladly give. It is also essential that some form of unemployment insurance should be established in every trade. This also should be devoted to the provision of productive work for those whose regular occupations have failed them. To pay money for subsistence and get no return in labour as is done with the hatefully named "dole" in Britain is tv> aggravate existing depression. It is in any case a degrading and insulting thing that honest and industrious workmen, seeking only to sell their labour at its market value, should instead be offered charity. Clearing Noxious Weeds. E.B.C. writes: The City Council could utilise the services of a good many men at present unemployed if they were to clean up the areas of noxious weeds in the city, principally the acres of gorse in the Avondale and Point Chevalier districts. Where privately-owned land is affected the council should have the work done and the cost charged to the nwn-r of the property concerned. Work for several men for some time would be provided if this course were adopted. H. Preston -vrites to say that the City Council has a large patch of gorse between St. George's Bay Road and Albion Road, and suggests that unemployed be put on to clear it.