THE DEMORALISING DOLE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 55, 28 November 1929, Page 13

THE DEMORALISING DOLE

Sir, —In your leading article of the 25th inst., you refer to the demoralising effect of granting the dole to boys and girls of 15 years of age. You also very rightly state that the spur of necessity is most salutary to these young people. On the other hand, you overlook the glaring fact that there must be something radically faulty with an industrial system that gives ground for such legislation. Mentioning the fact that the only cure for unemployment is work, does not feed or clothe the ’individual who is unable to find it. Until work can be provided, it behoves the champions of the present system to stand loyally by those who are williug and anxious to work, but are denied the opportunity. I think you will agree that the children of the rich know very little of the spur of necessity. Would you, -therefore, suggest that their parents should disinherit theni lest they become demoralised? There is too much truth, Mr. Editor, in your article not to endeavour to understand it in the spirit in which it is written, but it points most forcibly to a very tragic state of affairs. It goes to prove that the failure of the labour market to absorb these boys and girls will not' only tend to demoralise them if. they are granted the dole, but it will also demoralise and damn them if they are uncared fbr and allowed to drift. By far too many of our so-called criminals are nothing more than the human sacrifices that we have made to bolster up modern industrialism. 11ns cannot, and must not, go on-indefinitely, and the mere talk of work without formulating the wherewithal to provide it is only mocking the helpless unemployed in the vain hope of putting off the evil day of reckoning. Even our so-called trade booms that are followed by slumps do not temporarily solve the unemployed problem. And when the slumps come, as they unfortunately do, we are told by. our political economists that we over-produced during the boom. ■ If we over-produced, then surely the masses must have under-consumed. Under-consumption is due to the inability to purchase, owing to low wages. Ibis is either right or wrong, and if wrong, some explanation should be forthcoming from those who claim to be authorities on this perplexing problem. All outside evidence points to New Zealand as a land of plenty, yet we have hungry men clamouring for casual employment. We have had, in the year 1929, a Prime Minister forcing the hand of Government and municipal departments because private enterprise cannot provide work for the people. Up to date, neither Reform, United, or Labour appear to have any straight answer to the unemployed tangle. At the last General Election the leader of the Reform Party told us that we had turned the corner. We have neither turned nor struck it, but are still wandering, in the same old wilderness. ■ v Well, Sir, the dole is demoralising, no matter in what form it is paid—rent, interest, profit, or unemployment pay. All these institutions of the dole are liable to abuse; they are abused—hence the problem of unemployment and poverty on the one hand, and abundance on the other. Politicians and professors of economics will discuss and argue, and spill ink indefinitely, but what they refrain from honestly discussing is: What is it that prevents the resources of the nation getting into, the entire life ot.the nation, and how is it that the constantlyflowing stream of wealth instead of irrigating the whole life of the people runs tn such a way . that certain lives grow rank with excessive luxury, whilst it leaves others bleak and dry ? If this very small matter is given a little generous consideration the solution to the most burning social and economic problem ot the hour will not be far to seek, end overdifficult to solve.—l am, etc., cB H Wellington, November 25.