ALARMING UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 90, 17 April 1929, Page 6

ALARMING UNEMPLOYMENT.

It is very important that the Government and the public should realise the state of the unemployment market as revealed yesterday at the meeting of the Hospital Board. We are not yet into winter, yet the Board is spending ;£4OOO a month in relief. The position is no better than it was a year ago, and the coming winter may be worse than any of the previous three. Clearly, the whole of the cost of relieving all this local distress, so much of which is caused by the failure of strong, ablebodied men to find work, should not fall on the ratepayers. It is a national concern. The operation of forces that will remove unemployment, such as the promotion of land settlement and the restoration of investors' confidence —the banks are bursting with money— is necessarily slow, and neither unemployed nor burdened ratepayers can afford to Avail. Something must be done immediately, and the proposal for a conferenco of local bodies and members of Parliament is a sound one.