WORKLESS DAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 144, 20 June 1931, Page 13

WORKLESS DAYS

CANADA AND STATES

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

QUESTION LOOMS LARGE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 13th May.

Both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Hoover are at the moment pondering unemployed insurance. Hope springs eternal in Mr. Bennett's motive; fear is apparent in Mr. Hoover's outlook. Mr. Bennett hopes the country will not leap in the dark and set up a dole, with all its attendant evils in England. Mr. Hoover fears that,, if the United States still has 6,000,000 out. of work next year there will be little chance of his party or himself being returned to power without the influence of a national policy to cope with unemployment. ,

One of the Labour members at Ottawa—Canada has only three in a House 0f.245 members —made a perennial request for a federal system of insurance against unemployment, sickness, and invalidity. To his surprise, and the astonishment of Mr. Mackenzie King, a noted economist, Mr. Bennett's reply indicated careful study of the whole question. He delivered a thesis on the intricacies and actuarial factors involved—quite the clearest outline of the implications of unemployment insurance the House remembers to have heard. Mr. Bennett is not sure that the Federal Government is a competent authority to institute such a system. He doubts whether it is not the function of the provinces. At any rate, the provinces must be given the right to say whether thoy want unemployment insurance or not. It is quite likely that the older provinces, like Quebec and Ontario, whoso industries aro not seasonalj will have none of it. Secondly, Mr. Bennett insists that any such scheme must be contributory; Thirdly, it must be actuarially sound. Fourthly,Tvho is to administer it? The Government, with every prospect of it becoming a political football, or a Commission, removed from the political sphere, who is eligible ? Tic worker alone, or is the farmer, ever confronted with a variation of prices, eligible? What is the preminm? What is the basis of unemployment, comparing a man in a seaBonal occupation with one whoso industry is constant? CLIMATIC PECULIARITY. Canada is quite different to Britain, Australia, Now Zealand, or South Africa in the matter of unemployment insurance. Relatively and absolutely, this Dominion has a; greater number of seasonal industries. The winter creates its own particular problem that exists nowhere else in tho Empire in such measure. Key industries, such as lumber, fish, mining, and farming, aro affected by climatic Conditions'. If unemployment insurance were adopted in Canada in tho samo measure as in Britain, relatively, the dole would attract thousands, perhaps millions, to reside in British Columbia, the only really equable climate all the year round —a prospect that tho Pacific province wouid regard with anything but equanimity, as most of them would be. unskilled workers. ■ . ■ These are the inarh phases of tho problem} as it affects Canada; nothing was heard of the dole in Canada in preDepression days.. If another ten-year cycle of prosperity comes, as it did after 1921, the need for the dole will disappear. However, Mr. Bennett is ready to examine the situation minutely, but he is determined that the provinces must co-operate whole-heartedly before lio will commit the country. STATES MUST DO SOMETHING. With Mr. Hoover and the Republican Party, unemployment insurance, or anything in the nature of the dole is un-American-anathema^ Yet industry has not devised any stabilisation of employment, while the numbers of idle have increased in a year from. 2,000,000 to 6,000,000. The problem reared its head at the annual convention of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Shortly after the eliainnan of the Presidential National Comnfittco on Unemployment, Colonel Woods,' departed for England and the Continent to examine systems in force there. .The .Administration party in Congress appointed* a Committee of the Senate to investigate'it at home. Republicans, in less trying times, have held up the dole before the American public as a sign of English decadence. It has been pointed to as proof that Britain is toppling from her seat as a leader in world commerce. Yet something must be done. No one is optimistic enough to believe that the United States will recapture the overseas trade she has lost in the past eighteen months. Shrewd observers forecast that the lion's share of it will go to Britain, who has paid her war debt up to date and carried the burden of depression with greater sacrifices than, have boon made elsewhere. Apart from economic conditions, political considerations demand action by President Hoover and the Republican Party. Continued unemployment is a menace to the party in power. Let it continue into next winter, and the prospects for the Republicans—for President Hoover himself—would be doubtful. If a euro cannot bo found, a palliative must be forthcoming. It is a problem whose magnitude increases the more it is«ponderod.