PERMANENT UNEMPLOYMENT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21533, 24 July 1935, Page 18

PERMANENT UNEMPLOYMENT

TO TOT JSDITOB OF TEE PBF.BS. Sir,—l have given the unemployment problem a lot of thought, too much,, probably. I was the first In the field with the suggestion about seven years ago to start a levy on wages to assist the unemployed, as reference to the! Mayor's files will prove. The Rev. J.! K. Archer was in office then, and if that money had been used in a humane manner to alleviate the distress caused by unemployment, instead of paying for useless work to be done first, they would have reached the objective sooner. The doing of this work, useless or otherwise, has only tended to put more men out of steady employment. It has grown in immensity until now we find that New Zealand's labour is practically conscripted. To get work to-day you must be unemployed, and homeless, more than 21 years of age, and no youths need apply. At the beginning of the present winter 7000 men were registered as unemployed. To be correct, 3500 men were kept out of steady work by using those 7000 men for two or three days a week. Would it not be better for all concerned if half of those men were working constantly? Would it not make it easier to provide for half the number? It is quite obvious to a sane man why they want to keep the figures up. If the public works of the country and the building of a lot of our palatial'buildlngs are going to be done by men labelled unemployed, the name has altered its true meaning this last few years, and they should be called half-time workers instead. Your leading article of to-day hits the nail on the head when it says New Zealand has not begun to understand the unemployment problem, let alone solve it. No, the glass has been placed to the blind ey% and from what we can see as yet it is still being held there.— Yours, etc., NUFF SED. July 22, 1935.