LOST EFFICIENCY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 58, 6 September 1937, Page 8

LOST EFFICIENCY

BURDEN OF THE IDLE

AMERICA'S UNEMPLOYABLE

(From "The Post's" Representative). VANCOUVER,, August 18. The authorities of Canada and the United States have discovered that, though more people want to work during depression than during good times, as times improve and more jobs are available, the number of unemployed shows no appreciable decline. The reason is that, after four years on relief, unemployed will not accept work, for fear that, when the; immediate job is completed, they may noit be restored to the relief payroll. Although • prosperity has returned to the United States, the number of unemployed: is officially estimated; today at';-9.000,000 persons.-. ' , ; ..u . : / ; Relief officials: in; the United States afford many illustrations'of how efficiency of workers declines after years on relief. . One such has 7200 persons of employable age on his rolls: . Of that number, only 746 are classified as fit to take jobs. The headquarters of relief in New- York wanted, 100 typists. In three days of testing only three were found to be satisfactory: The New York Parks Board has, in the past two years rejected, as unfitted for work, 41,000 relief recipients sent to it. During four years, efficiency of workers has declined from 75 to 25 per cent., due to no other fact'than that relief has caused them to acquire the habits of the leisured class. Local governing bodies in Canada assert that, when jobs are available, they are filled by transients from the rural districts of their own or other provinces; city unemployed prefer to remain • idle while relief .vouchers for food, clothing, rent, and fuel are arriving regularly. To meet this drain on the rural working population,'the Dominion Government was obliged to pay a bonus to wheat farmers towards the board of farm hands. AMERICA'S HUGE EXPENDITURE. In both countries no national appropriation was made for unemployment relief until the., recent depression. Funds were voted from' public ' revenues, unlike Australia and New Zealand where relief was cared for .by specific taxation. The result has been an interminable controversy- between Federal, provincial or State, and local I authorities as to the relative share of responsibility and cost. Gradually, the Federal authority has been forced to increase its quota of relief appropriation. An attempt to solve the problem by unemployment insurance on a national scale was frustrated, in Canada, j by the provinces. In the United States, immeasurably larger . propor-1 tionate Federal subsidies eased the j problem for the States and municipalities, the majority.of which repaid the Federal authority' by endorsing and' putting into operation President Roosevelt's mammoth unemployment insurance, old age pension, and social security legislation, involving an outlay of a thousand millions sterling.l Unable to afford the same per capita outlay, | even if the provinces were not hostile to any Federal legislation, Canada must, perforce, muddle along.