The Press Tuesday, July 22, 1930. The Unemployment Bill.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19986, 22 July 1930, Page 10

The Press Tuesday, July 22, 1930. The Unemployment Bill.

It is at once surprising and depressing that criticism of the Government's Lnemployment Bill, during the second reading debate at the end of the week, should have concentrated in the main and so respectfully on its methods. This is a dangerous attitude, because it overlooks what the Bill overlooks, the fundamental principle that unemployment can be got rid of only by getting rid of its causes. Men are not unemployed because there is nothing for them to do, but because it does not pay to employ them in the prevailing conditions of cost. If costs are attacked and reduced, the demand for labour will expand at once. To expand the demand by any sort of device that leaves costs unreduced or even increases them is simply to defy the facts of the ease in a blind and stupid way and to harden them against ourselves; and since this is what the Bill does, dispute about the precise manner in which it does so is a comparatively futile exercise. If the Bill becomes law, up to a million a year will be spent in the attempt to escape the inescapable consequences of past errors, the effect of which was delayed as long as oversea price levels remained high but has to be met and overcome now, when prices have fallen. By legislating foolishly, by fixing wages without regard for the costs of production, by failing to measure and place the cost of tariffs accurately, by borrowing faster than we can create the assets for repayment, and by making production drag a constantly increasing load of taxation, we have unfitted ourselves to meet the effect of falling price levels. We cannot redress them. Wjcan, and must, redress the cost factors that are within our own control; and the Bill is a trumpery alternative to that plain necessity. It maintains the quite impossible pretence that the country can afford to do what production cannot afford to do, and pay thousands of men 14s a day because they will not take less. The character of this pretence, which has already inflicted enormous harm and, if persisted in, will inflict still more, not altered by the provision in the Bi'l for grants or loans, " enabling farmers " to employ workers advantageously to "all parties," as the Minister, Mr Smith, put it. Farmer A will be lucky enough to get his work done, he will pay what it is worth, and the taxpayer will pay the difference; but farmer B, in the next ctfunty, will either get nothing done at all or have to pay the. 14s a day himself, more than he can afford or the work is worth. The immediate effect of this particular provision, which seems to be clumsily intended to propitiate farmers, would he to fix 14s a day as the standard minimum agricultural wage, aggravating the mischief already done; and the long-run, crippling effect on production would be much the same, however this excessive labour-cost was distributed. This provision is of course only one among many in the Bill; but it is worth while to pick it out, because the Government clearly sets great store by it. Neither this, however, nor any other clause that directs the Unemployment Board to organise work, or to fit the unemployed for it, recognises the true nature of the problem. Having done a good deal to disqualify itself from selling its products successfully in the world's markets, the country has simply to qualify itself again by improving its methods, working a little harder, and facing a little sacrifice. But the Bill follows the Unemployment Report in disregard of the disqualifying conditions and in treating unemployment as a permanent social disability, calling for permanent relief. As long as unemployment is so regarded, and so ministered to—which means, no doubt, as long as the present Government is in office —we shall have unemployment, and more of it; and, what is worst of all, it will be made increasingly difficult to adopt wiser measures and succeed with them.