UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 87, 14 April 1931, Page 6

UNEMPLOYMENT.

In your issue dated the 10th inst. Mr. Henry asks me two very sensible questions. First, he asks would present wages be maintained with the reduction of hours. My answer is "Yes," the week's wages must be the same with a six or seven hour day and a five-day week. The unemployed must be kept, and why should some men be degraded with overwork and others degraded with not enough work? Question number two: Why has unemployment increased in England and Australia under Labour Governments? The Labour Governments in England and Australia had no more to do with increased unemployment than the United Government had to do with the increase in unemployment here. Indeed, the position would have been worse under Tory government. In fundamentals Labour Governments are no different from Liberal or Conservative Governments; they only differ in details. Only a Government that grasps the great truth that everything comes from the land and by the application of labour to land, can cure luiemployment. There is no unemployment in countries where labour has free access to the land. Who will deny that the land i 6 for our use and not for gambling with? Yet we know that the land is the subject of a gigantic gamble. When we see to it that the whole of the communitycreated value of the land is retained by the community and the individual improvements retained by the occupier we will banish real unemployment, for labour without land is. as useless as a saddle without a horse. ;. E: STEVENSON. •