LEISURE AND EMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 86, 13 April 1931, Page 6

LEISURE AND EMPLOYMENT.

It is a sign of the tinier, and a hopeful sign, that the most arresting idea for tackling the problem of universal unemployment should come from a woman. It is not another instance of feminine intuition. It comes from one of the best brains in the business world of to-day, fortified by close acquaintance over a period of years with the workings of capital and industry. A pamphlet by Mrs. M. A. Ckradesley Brereton, entitled "Unemployed or Reserve" and described by her as ''a call to England to make good in peace as she did in war," has appeared. It deals exhaustively with the problem of unemployment, and her suggested remedy has the distinction of being both novel and masterly. The author has filled many important positions in the teaching and business professions, has been decorated by the French Government for services to International Public Health, and was in 1922-23 chairman of the Association for Education in Industry and Commerce. It was probably from her research and conclusions in this capacity that her scheme took form. It involves education of the politician, the financier and the employer as well as the employed. The basic idea was contained in a speech made by Mrs. Brereton several years ago when unemployment in England first became acute. Speaking of the utilisation of by-products, formerly called waste products, in all modern industries, she appealed for a similar use to be made of human by-products. Her contention that "unemployment should be the reward of the strongest, not the calamity of the weakest" expresses the principle of the scheme. Since modern industry cannot function without a reserve of workers, she holds that those who stand and wait serve an indispensable purpose. And if this principle of a necessary reserve is accepted, surely we can find an insurance plan both actuarially sound from a financial viewpoint and humanly reasonable. And further, if this reserve of workers serves a useful and necessary purpose, should we not cease to regard merely as unemployed the changing groups which fall into the ranks of those waiting their turn? If this is so, we should be able to organise an active reserve in place of inactive unemployed. This active reserve should be recruited from the best workers and not from the weaker members of the human •'"'by-products of industry." The present plan, which obliges the less robust and less efficient to stand off, does,' in spite of its cost to the community, cause them to grow weaker still in every sense, physical, mental, moral and financial. There is a grave danger that we may come to look on unemployment as a sort of inevitable and incurable disease for which at best we can build costly hospitals and provide expensive drugs. Mrs. Brereton says: "The best workers should, in periods when trade is flourishing, qualify for off-time periods when trade is languishing." Modern methods involving labour-saving by machinery and the speeding-up of the workers inevitably result in leisure. Much is written nowadays of proposals for the better distribution of leisure, but Mrs. Brereton holds that we must aim at a system of payment for work plus leisure as an ultimate solution of the problem. It is possible to visualise leisure properly planned, properly controlled, properly distributed as between each grade of worker, and, as between every season of the working year, as something worth paying for —that it may become the most economically-productive phase of the trained worker's life and service. —M.B.S.