A World Problem

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 226, 20 June 1936, Page 4

A World Problem

Sir, —Mr. Savage made a statement that the machine was displacing' manual labour, and that a 40-hour week was necessary to assist in a remedy. In the writer’s experience land taxation advocates are the greatest disputants of the machine-displacing-labour theory. The basis of their argument lies in the fact that the machine was displacing labour 40 years age; and that iu spite if it the ensuing unemployment passed unnoticed, because the making of machines that created and did work that was impossible without them created other channels of employment. What the disputants forget to note re that at that period mass migration was in full swing and that its possibility was due to the fact that thousands of individuals were willing to become pioneers; and that pioneering means doing unpaid, low paid, inconvenient labour amid uncongenial surroundings, in the belief and hope that the future would justify their action. In conjunction with this pioneer-, ing phase there were thousands of indi-' viduals willing to become pioneer investors in deferred interest payment schemes, also in the hope and belief that future profits would justify their investments. It was the combination of these two forms of pioneering that was mainly responsible for the replacement of former machine-displaced labour into other channels of employment. The disputants fail to realise that when migration stopped the machine-dis-placed remained displaced. The basis of the present turn in the road to prosperity is the pioneering carried on in Russia and Manchukuo. Pioneering in Abyssinia by Italy will widen this road considerably ; this road will widen still more if Germany is allowed to participate in colonial pioneering expansion schemes. Would-be pioneers in New Zealand are following the lead of the trades unions; they demand and expect an immediate return for their investments and labour; failure in the realisation of this demand is tlie main cause of New Zealand unemployment. Due to this fact, whether we like it or not, New Zealand is forced into a socialistic career; the Government from now on must take up pioneering where its individuals left off. Pioneering includes experimenting; experimenting means doing unpayable and unpaid work, also unpayable investment involving loss of capital. This does not augur well for Mr. .Savage’s 40-hour week, which will do nothing toward curing unemployment, anyhow; I predict that dischargee due to unreturnable costs will more than balance increases. As a five-year unemployed man I see in a 40-hour week for me and others still unemployed increased living costs, increased rent, and a rise in rates, with no compensation. Mr. Savage has said that machines are displacing labour, thus doubling the number competing for access to the limited wages fund available; common sense would dictate to give all indigent individuals equal opportunity of access aided by limiting individual access to the fund; the immediate effect would be to'lower all living costs, through the inability of all to pay. This brings us up against an idle period for all; Mussolini is indirectly making use of this idle period by conscripting the Italian manhood to make possible in Abyssinia living conditions for Italians. This brings us into line with the unrecognised underlying cause of present world conditions, showing that civil war, threatened European war, need of defence, intense nationalism, immigration, emigration and unemployment are all phases of this one cause. This cause is failure to recognise and refusal of the world’s adult population since the stoppage of free world migration to attempt to make provision to put the rising generation it has brought into being on a marriageable living basis. This subject, in itself, too far ahead of modern thought to be worth while discussing here, involves subjects removed further still from modern thought, which will cost the world dearly if not recognised and tackled withing the next 20, 10 or even five years; one which concerns us is the development of Australian and New Zealand statesmen with ability to attract without local dislocation a million pioneering emigrants a year from Europe as a first line of defence against future Asiatic- dominance, —I am, etc., F. CONNOLLY, i Wellington, June 18.