CRITICS SILENCED

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 51, 7 September 1928, Page 9

CRITICS SILENCED

INSURANCE OF UNEMPLOYED

LESSON PROM ENGLAND

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") AUCKLAND, This Day. Kuceut discussions on the merits of unemployment insurance lend point to the remarks of the British Minister of Labour (Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland) in a letter replying to an inquiry made on behalf of Mr. A. J. Hutchinson, of Auckland. ''The scheme of unemployment insurance," writes Sir Arthur, "has been subject to a good deal of criticism in the past, particularly in the years following its great extension in 1920. I think that waa due partly to the novelty o£ the experiment and partly to the general unrest and dissatisfaction which followed the war. It is extraordinary how that criticism has died down latterly. Unemployment insurance has now passed beyond the experimental stage, and it has, I hope, ceased to be a matter of party dißpute. I do not claim the present scheme is perfect; its details are capable of improvement and will constantly be improved, and it may be that even its broader principles will change in time, but I feel certain that unemployment insurance in some form or other has become a permanent feature of the social legislation of this country. Personally, I cannot contemplate what would have happened in the post-war years, and what would be happening now without it. Modern industrial conditionos in Great Britain are such that some kind of public provision against unemployment is inevitable, and in order that it may be effective and free from demoralising tendencies, it must be made upon a permanent basis, and I do not, of course, go so far as to say that under conditions elsewhere some other and possibly better means of reaching the same end may not be found. I write only of this country."