CURE OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 235, 4 October 1935, Page 6

CURE OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

TREATING THE SYMPTOMS.

(To the Editor.)

The new programme of works announced bv the Minister of Employment shows that ■the Government still misunderstands the nature of the disease and treats unemployinent as a condition to be relieved and perpetuated 'by a never-ending succession of small public works. These treat the symptoms and not the seat—the fruits and not the roots— the effects and not the cause of unemployment, which is a social disease. According to statistics, we have some 80,000 farmers in New Zealand who have a title to land, that is about 5 per cent of the population. How can we hope to cure unemployment when 95 per cent of the people have no title to land and therefore derive their security of tenure of employment from the small minority of 5 per cent and from the Government, which holds vast areas of land that are idle or not put to productive use, and which pays no rent for such land, every acre of which is capable of fully or partially supporting a human being? The problem before the country is to convert a vast army of some 200,000 town dwelling, unproductive unemployed people, into a rural productively employed community rooted on the soil with all the security of tenure of health, wealth and prosperity that follows from possession of the soil. The New Deal schemes of the U.S.A. have the same job in hand, but their unemployed army is about one hundred times as large as ours, and yet their schemes have been started. The ideal aimed at is the creation of co-operative profitsharing rural settlements, with the great attractions of very cheap living, cheap allelectric homes and remunerative occupations for all partly on the land and partly in new village industries worked with the aid of very cheap electric power. Such co-operative schemes are the best basis of the transition of New Zealand from a primary produce exporting nation to one where primary and secondary industries balance cach other's activities. THOMAS A. F. STONE, 8.E., A.M.I.M.E.