BARROWS AND UNEMPLOYED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 50, 1 March 1937, Page 8

BARROWS AND UNEMPLOYED

(To the Emtor.}'

Sir,—When the Public Works Minister, as you put it, "kept himself in the news" by driving an American steam tractor over a wheelbarrow and shovel your very able subleader made of it an epic on the evolution of machinery. Surely, Sir, there is something of more serious moment than this to the .unfortunate but deserving unemployed.

Out of every pound which we earn by work, eightpence is deducted as "unemployment tax," that is, for the express purpose of finding work, however uneconomic, for the unemployed, and it cannot be too forcibly insisted that this is the case. Our Public Works Minister, however, is much more concerned in completing uneconomic railways as a contractor would do, that is, in a minimum time and at a minimum of cost, which may "keep him in the news," but is no help, to those whom he professes to stand for. Cheap phrases such as "Who wants to push a barrow?" are an insult to the unemployed. I believe I am correct in saying that about two-thirds of our unemployed are on sustenance and I know that I am right in.-saying that most of them would rather push a barrow than walk the streets on sustenance, but what about them in, say, two years' time? Will'they then be a professional class of unemployables such as England has to suffer? Let us make no mistake about it. Steam shovels and tractors are "labour saving" not labour-making inventions. Unemployment has come to stay; it is "the white man's burden" for many a long day to come and pushing barrows is a better job than walking the streets. If I may be allowed to extend these remarks, is not the policy of the Public Works Minister being followed similarly in the house-building programme, in which an army of quite efficient builders is being sacrificed to the doubtful efficiency of "Government in industry"?-! am, etc., labour^