UNEMPLOYMENT

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 307, 23 September 1926, Page 8

UNEMPLOYMENT

SIR JAMES ALLEN’S VIEWS Observing that unless the Dominions could really absorb the people sent to them, immigration was not a success, Sir lames Allen, who was the speaker at the New Zealand Club luncheon yesterday, said he did not want it to go out that the unemployment problem was anything more than a passing phase in our lives. “I come back to New Zealand, ’ he said, "to find a certain amount of unemployment in this young country. I remember communicating with the late Nir. Massey in 192? in regard to migration. Arrangements were made for you to absorb 10,000 people a year. I find, upon mv return, that there is some difficulty in absorbing these people. I don’t know enough about conditions here to diagnose exactly the reason fol it. One knows that there was overcrowding last year, and that your imports were not what they ought to have been. It is unfortunate that last year your exports did not amount to the value of the imports. Perhaps that may ’ be one of the reasons for it. “I hope,” continued Sir James Allen, “that the papers will not lead people to think that I am talking of this temporary unemployment as anything more than a phase in our life. I don t believe it will last. It is essential that those who are sent out from the Old Country should be absorbed. I doubt very much ‘whether the British people realise that the question is not an easy one. It requires careful thought.”