UNEMPLOYMENT

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 96, 27 April 1929, Page 14

UNEMPLOYMENT

MONEY IDLE IN BANKS

Discussing the unemployment problem at a function in Auckland, the Minister of Health (the Hon. a. J. Stallworthy) said it was a matter in which all should co-operate. With £9,000,000 relatively idle in tho banks it would appear that many citizens were :iot "pulling their weight" in tho struggle back to universal prosperity. A "goslow" or a "strike" policy on the part of capital had just as pernicious an effect upon the community as other forms of such policies. The now Government had made its policy of noneinterference with legitimate private enterprise perfectly plain, and had also declared its adherence to the principle if a fair basis where competition between State arid private enterprise had developed. All this threw responsibility upon private capital to make such a response as would soon get the Dominin i out of its present difficulties.

The Minister said that'while recovery was all too slow, the new Government had done a great deal to improv: the position It was a perfectly fair presumption, having regard to all the new Government had already done, th; L liau there not been a radical change oi. administrative policy the number or' unemployed to-day would have been twice or three times as largo and the general situation very serious indeed. Instead of that there was a 'rapidlyreturning spirit of optimism, based upon a progressive Liberal policy.