Increasing Unemployment

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 301, 16 September 1936, Page 11

Increasing Unemployment

Sir, —The fact disclosed by your issue of Monday’s “Dominion” that the number of unemployed has increased by 10,000 calls for earnest consideration. Like one of old, we feel inclined to say “Vain is the help of man.” When will we learn that this problem is past human solution? • Looking at it as one who has always said we should all help the Government in trying to solve. this problem, one or two reasons for • this increase seem apparent. First, what many of us feared has happened; the country is getting overrun with the poorer class from Australia, attracted here by the promising _ reports they have heard of the efforts to improve the workers’ conditions. Then the increase in the rates of sustenance has made sustenance more enticing than hard work. . „ It seems now that the Government is making unemployment instead of curing it. This is perhaps i hard thing to say, but let us face the facte. I met a man' the other day to 'Whom I feel like taking off my hat. He collects bottles, etc., and I said to him, “Why don’t you go on the sustenance?” I will never forget the lock he gave me. He said, “While I can work I want nothing from no one and as long as I can make a living at this I am content without any Government help.” It really seems that more than half of the people of New Zealand arg living on the Government. In many cases the man who works has to keep the chap who won’t work. The country is not short of land. Millions of acres of good land are lying idle. Why not. give a holding to anyone that is willing to work it and try and solve the problem that way?—l am, etc., OBSERVER. Wellington, September 15.