HELP FOR WORKLESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1937, Page 3

HELP FOR WORKLESS.

RELIEF IN HOMELAND. 1 AUCKLAND MAN'S SCHEME. 9 A former Auckland' resident, Mr. F. S. Morton, returned by the Tainui for a short visit to New Zealand (says the Wellington "Post"). Once a member of the Auckland Transport Board, from which he resigned in 1929. Mr. Morton has been living in England for seven years, and in two months' time he is going back there to his manufacturing and engineering business. Mr. Morton said that he arrived in England in January, 1900, when the Labour Government was in power, and he submitted to it a scheme for the relief of unemployment. That scheme was referred to a Royal Comniision, subsequent Governments had brought parts of it into operation, and the present Government was still doing it. He had recommended, for instance, that everybody should come within the scope of the unemployment relief scheme, and of recent years large classes of workers, previously excluded, had been admitted. Part of his scheme was that where an industry found itself unable to meet the w-age demands of the employees the Government should investigate the position, and having satisfied itself that the demands were reasonable and that the companies could not pay, it should make up the difference by a subsidy. When the industry was on its feet the Government should participate in the profits in proportion to the amount of its subsidy. The Government in England had not yet put this into operation. but it would continue to have trouble in Lancashire until something was done. "In England I was astounded at the conditions under which the people have to live and work," said Mr. Morton. "A New Zealander could not exist under those conditions. He could not bring himself down to that level." The cost of living in England had increased very considerably, being much higher than it was in New Zealand. Rents, which were once low, were now climbing, partly because of the more modern buildings and the desire of the people to live out of the towns.