UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 15, 19 January 1931, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS.

LABOUR AND RAW MATERIALS,

(To the Editor.)

It is vitally necessary to arrive at some agreement as to the cause of unemployment before any steps can be taken towards a cure. The lessened amount of capital due to slump priceis for our produce is compelled to do the work the capital of 1924 did. The Government receives less in taxation, even though taxes are increased. The shopkeeper receives leas over his counter. The farmer receives less for his produce. The natural and inescapable law says the labourer must receive less for his labour, but as everything is cheapened also hie lessened wages will not represent lower living standards once adjustment is made to lower, levels, for labour cost and taxes represent production cost plus the price of materials, which have taken their drop. Take any graph; you will find at all times labour and raw material prices fluctuate together. Legislation can neither hapten nor retard this natural law to any extent, but any effect it does have is harmful. It was no effort of the worker that raised wages between 1912 and 1921. It was just a natural increase commensurate with increasing capital, and it will be no artificial means which causes wagee to drop as capital decreases. We know that capital has been depleted all the world over and that it has coincided with labour troubles—cause and effect. We also know that all the world over wages have suffered serious declines —an attempt to adjust capital to labour. It may be remarked that, though in all ages material prices and wages have risen or fallen together, over the last 100 years wages have relatively increased enormously, and economists state the reason to be labour-saving machinery, which has caused labour to produce more and consequently receive more. Till spinning machines caused one man to do the work of fifty no working man wore wool, and few of the middle class either. If labour-saving machinery had not been used Auckland's buildings of the last ten years would have probably employed the same labour, but the buildings would have been one-third the eize. Capital determines the status of a city, and any mea»s which allows capital to do more for the money will benefit the community, and any means which benefits a community naturally benefits labour, which in a prosperous community is also prosperous. Our lessened capital must be met by making it go further. LIBERAL.