BEACHCOMBING

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 26, 1 February 1932, Page 6

BEACHCOMBING

Two solutions of the unemployment problem are propounded by Wellington newspaper correspondents. Each recipe, has to do with a species of beachcombing. One writer wants to know why the system of working the ocean beach sands for gold which is proving successful again on the coast of Westland cannot be introduced on the beaches near the Empire City. "Why not prospect our local beaches, say, from Terawhiti to Lyall Bay, and if payable gold is discovered — well, the unemployed could do the rest." The prospect is alluring, on paper, "if" . The spectacle of gangs of toilers shovelling away on the suburban beaches in the eternal quest would be as good an illustration as could be desired of the giddy height of optimism. There is something naively touching in the reasoning that if gold can be got on the West Coast shore (where it has been borne down by the torrents from the heart of the Southern Alps) it should be found on all other beaches. The great advantage, of course, of a treasure find on a beach near the city is that all the population could take a hand in it and the tramcars and buses could profit accordingly; seaside business would boom and waterfront sections could be sold at delirious prices per inch. It might be necessary for adjacent property owners to "salt" the beach beforehand, but the expenditure would soon be recouped. At any rate, somebody would get some gold out of it. The other economist's suggestion concerns our summer isles of the Pacific. He advocates assisted ■ immigration to South Africa and t6 some of the British South Sea Islands. He knows many people, he says, "who would gladly go to make the humblest living where the winter is less severe than that predicted for this country." The islands are not specified, but it is to be gathered that the Cook Islands, for example, are recommended; we may suppose also Samoa and Nine and the northern atolls where there is no winter at all. We may suppose also the delight of the brown and white populace of, say, Barotonga or Aitutaki at the arrival of a shipload of papalangi doad-brokes from New Zealand to live th« simple life under the coconuts. The thought of that idyllic existence with a devoted native people willing to give land and food to poor whites has drawn many a man to the tropic isles. In the old days it was easy enough; but even the bountiful communism of the kindly Polynesians might not be equal to the assimilation of a cargo of the chronic workless to-day. The only hope seems to lie in the far north-west, the black islands of New Ireland and New Britain and up towards Papua. There, it is understood, the Melancsian savage is still quite willing to absorb the white man into his social-economic system in the most complete and efficacious manner. Some of the Southern towns militant Communists might pioneer the emigration to those parts and argue out the ethics of the problem with the chiefs of the Kuku-Kukus. The result in the long run would probably be quite satisfactory to New Zealand and to the Kuku-Kukus. —TANGIWAI.