UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 284, 30 November 1928, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

PLEA FOR LAND SETTLEMENT. (To the Editor.) I was pleased to see Mr. Charles Lawrin s comments on my recent letter with reference to land settlement. It was impossible for me to deal with all aspects of the subject in ths correspondence under review, but definite constructive suggestions for settlement have been published from time to time and are still available. Apart, however, from this, there should have been food for thought in the suggestion that our present method of relieving unemployment is unsound. The point I particularly wished to emphasise was that we might inaugurate remedial measures rather than go on week to week doling out monc? to people who, as far as my experience goes are most unhappy in the circumstances which makes it necessary for them to accept anything in the shape of charity. So far as relief "works are concerned, it should not be necessary to emphasise that any public expenditure which does not produce the maximum result is uneconomic and has to be paid for in some form or other, usually in taxation. To the observant man there is evidence on every hand of public works being carried out which we could well do without at this juncture. The receat amendment of the land laws designed to assist small settlement was a step in the right direction, but it docs not meet the position of the unemployed man with no capital. Provided all the other points necessary under t.hi« enactment are adjusted the buyer finds himself in most cases with a section minus buildings, stock or implements, which, of course, means further expenditure before he can earn a return on his holding. It may be of interest to state that I am receiving inquiries from all parts, particularly from the workers themselves, as to the possibilities of inaugurating a scheme which gives them the chance to make good. The local authorities with the general Government, and with the assistance of a healthy public opinion, could within a verv short time design a virile settlement policV which would quickly relieve all but chronic cases of unemployment. It was the lamentable fact that there is no general movement to solve our present industrial dislocation which prompted my first letter and which now leads me to urge a Dominion-wide quickening of interest in this vital subject. X- G. GRIBBLE.