REFORM AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 231, 30 September 1930, Page 6

REFORM AND UNEMPLOYMENT.

Going to the assistance of the Reform candidate in Waipawa, the Leader of the Opposition has told the electors that the policies of the United and Reform parties in inspect of unemployment are "widely divergent." We suppose mathematicians world agree that there is a wide divergence between a plus and a minus quantity. The difference between United and Reform is that one has a policy and the other has not. It is true that Ml*. Coates said in this by-election address that men should be employed on suitable lands rather than on railways, and that the real remedy for unemployment was to enable private enterjH-ise to re-absorb the unemployed in industry by reducing overhead costs and increasing output, but all this does not go beyond the cloudland of generality. Mr. Coates had ample opportunity to check unemployment by these methods, but what did he do in this direction ? He draws attention to the great increase in the amount paid for unemployment work, but in the same breath he gives figures showing the increase in the number of unemployed; of course, the second increase largely explains the first. As for "anything in the shape of a dole ,, being "an insult to the people," it is sad to find Mr. Coates trying to pass the debased coinage of English conservatism. Why should a sustenance payment under the present Bill be considered more insulting than a payment from a Charitable Aid Board?