THE NOLAN CASE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 290, 7 September 1928, Page 11

THE NOLAN CASE

COMMENT BY LONDON LABOUR PAPER “SHOALS OF LETTERS” FROM NEW ZEALAND (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian Press Assn.-United Service.) London, September 5. Mr. Coates’s cables in reply to the starved immigrant case prompts the “Daily Herald” editorially to assert that it could fill its columns With extracts of letters from New Zealand, bearing out the statement that hundreds of starving men were walking the roads of the Dominion, and proceeds to give several extracts from private letters “which have been sent us in shoals.” Referring to the dire straits of migrants, the paper asks: “Is it conceivable that all these settlers are wrong and Mr. Coates is right? MR. COATES’S REPLY THE FACTS COUNT DOMINION’S UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES “Facts are better than any comment, and the fact that New Zealand has the lowest proportion of unemployed to the population in any country in the world is an effective answer to the statements which have been made by the ’Daily Herald.’” said the Prune Minister (the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates) last night, when his attention was drawn to the comment of that journal that it could fill its columns with extracts of letters from New Zealand bearing out the statement it had publislied that hundreds of starving men were walking the roads of tlie DomThe Prime Minister said that the returns showed that in the United States at the end of 1927 the unemployed ratio was one to 28. In Great Britain at March of this year the ratio was one in 38, in Queensland it was one in 63, in New South Wales one in 167 and for the whole of the Commonwealth it was one in 190. For New Zealand the figures were one ini 37u. “We in New Zealand know that it is an exaggeration to suggest that there are hundreds of starving men walking the roads or that large numbers ot migrants are in dire distress, the Prime Minister said. “We know .there is unemployment and the Government has not sought to minimise its real extent. We have preferred, to face the position fairly and squarely in an endeavour to find work to tide the men over their difficulty. For party purposes there are those who seek to magnify the position instead of lending assistance to the Government in finding a solution of the problem. “As far as the migrants are concerned,” Mr. Coates added, “close contact is maintained with them by tlie Immigration Department, and for e\ ei J one who has complained of the treatment accorded him in the country ot his adoption, there are hundreds who have nothing but gratitude for the assistance tlw have reeffivnd.