MUST BE SOLVED

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 125, 22 November 1935, Page 19

MUST BE SOLVED

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

The Government's record over the last four years was the subject of unfavourable reference by Mr. J. I. Goldsmith, Democrat candidate for Wellington South, at St. Thomas' Hall, Newtown, last evening.

"This Dominion has had four years of the greatest distress in its history," he said. "The Government has accepted with equanimity the widespread unemployment, privation, and misery among a large proportion of the population of this Dominion. The Government is facing the electors today with a plea for re-election. There is nothim; at all in the proposals of the Government today that will give any promise of a definite organised plan to lift the country out of this dismal calamity which weighs so heavily on the community. The Prime Minister has mentioned plans to put a few thousand men on Public Works and there are tentative proposals regarding the use of the Unemployment Funds for subsidising labour for reopening an iron mine and building farm structures. But this is not the way to tackle such a stupendous problem as unemployment existing on a gigantic scale with whicn we are unfortunately too familiar. The unemployment problem has got to be taken in hand immediately in no lialf-iiearted manner. The Government has utterly tailed In face the issue, and even now is not seized with its urgency. There cannot be any real movement towards economic recovery until the blight of unemployment has been removed.