UNEMPLOYED RELIEF

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 131, 27 February 1929, Page 13

UNEMPLOYED RELIEF

PAYMENT OF STANDARD WAGES

“FIRST RESORT OF FUTILE GOVERNMENTS”

Declaring that the exporting Industry, made possible by the work of those upon the land, would eventually have to pay "when the track to the pawnshop was permanently barred,” the ex-Minister of Lands (Mr. A. D. McLeod), in a speech at the opening of the Pirinoa liine works on Monday, condemned vigorously the policy of paying wages out of borrowed money in order to gain relief from unemployed pressure.

Mr. McLeod said he was in entire agreement with those who urged that there should be more settlement, and also better use made of much of the land already in occupation. He could not, however, agree with those who to-day were saying that the only solution to unemployment was getting the people on the land. It was a helpless, hopeless cry at any time. This country not so many years back exported well over one-third of its total in non-pastoral products; to-day it was depending on pastoral products for practically all its exports. This must inevitably lead to periodical depressions, at times of a violent nature. “Although I know there are other reasons for our drift toward being an almost one-horse show, it is my honest opinion, as it is of a great many others, that the prime reason is the abuse that is being made of the Arbitration Court,” said Mr. McLeod. “If the same conditions, ete., applied to the labour required in the pastoral industry as apply to other industries, a great deal of the at present farmed lands would go out of occupation. Do not think for one moment that I am a believer in low wages; all of you who know me personally know very different. My belief is that if high wages are to be permanently maintained, every man receiving wages must give of the best that is in him, studying his employer’s interests as well as his own. Paying unemployed standard wages on unproductive works out of borrowed moneys is only an expediency, as everyone knows, and is always the first resort of futile Governments. . “Following the post-war slump of 192021 in Australia, the various States either governed by political Labour or still worse by those scarcely in agreement on any one policy, but the retention of office, to gain temporary relief from unemployed pressure, started paying standard wages, out of borrowed money, on public works, neither essential or interestearning. What has been the net result? An average interest rate, payable on all loans a few years back below the average in New Zealand, now about ten shillings per cent, above rural industries largely denuded of necessary labour; her onetime great mining industry in a state of collapse, and so-called unemployment worse than ever: with a political Labour hierarchy refusing to investigate root causes, and a considerable section of the population careless of what is done so long as a mock prosperity continues as a result of extravagant borrowing. “New Zealand, with all these evidences before her. has apparently set her political barque on the same course. I mention all this for the reason that the exporting industry, made possible by the work of those upon the land, will eventually have to pay when the track to the pawnshop is permanently barred.