The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1932. UNEMPLOYED DEMONSTRATION.

Evening Star, Issue 21073, 9 April 1932, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1932. UNEMPLOYED DEMONSTRATION.

Yesterday’s demonstration by a portion of the unemployed will not do any good to anyone. It has always been a weakness of those who have been most active in resenting the misfortunes of the workless not to know their friends. The holding up of Mrs Black’s motor car and attempt to upset it yesterday was a signal example of this want of perception and gratitude. For two years at least, ever since the unemployment distress assumed its acuteness, Mrs Black has done her utmost to relievo it. She has worked day and night in that cause. It has been her main labour and thought. In that respect, as in others, she has been a

model mayoress. Defects of the system are not her fault. All but a very few of tho unemployed, and all others who know what is happening in our midst, appreciate that devotion on her part. In any demonstration which unemployed might make she was the last person who should have been molested, and the affront—we are unwilling to call it more—which was offered to her yesterday should be a subject of shame to-day. Nor can a cause which has its own claims to appeal to the sympathies of every decent-minded citizen he assisted in any way by breaking windows.

The case of tho unemployed is pathetic enough. Our own influence has been used, from beginning to last, to assist every effort to help them. But they have been most unfortunate in some of their organisations and in leaders who profess to represent them. Those truly represented by either the organisations or their spokesmen, we are convinced, make a very small proportion of the unemployed. Leaders get to the front who show much more capacity for inflaming the feelings of their victims than for controlling them when they have been aroused. Foolish words have more influence as depression continues. There are something like 3,000 unemployed in Dunedin, and all the trouble that has been caused, threatening subversion of order, has been made probably by a hundred. Yesterday’s deputation which waited on the Unemployment Committee and the Hospital Board had some idea, apparently, of being reasonable. But we have no sympathy for the single man who refuses to take camp employment. Earlier in the year we answered at length the artificial complaints against the Deep Stream camp, and made the case for its advantages, for the right class of single men, against the best life they could hope to live in the towns. From the Labour Party propagandists with political ends to serve and the agitators who glory in trouble whose aspersions had filled our columns there was no answer to those arguments, because they were unanswerable. The subject was allowed to die down for a while till the case for the camps could be forgotten, and then the old cries, were raised again. They have had the least influence in the camps themselves, where there is most knowledge of tho facts. We believe that 75 per cent, of the men at Deep Stream have been there since the commencement, and anyone who knows the young men of New Zealand will laugh at the explanation, given by a deputationist yesterday, that they remain there because they are “ terrorised.” There is something to be said for the system of “ chits,” which allows assisted families to choose their own provisions. But against the complaint made yesterday (which wo can understand) that carrying of sugar bags was loathsome, we must recall that, not many weeks ago, it was a grievance of the Unemployed Movement that women were not allowed to carry them.

The singing of the ‘Red Flag’ will not help any unemployment appeal in this country. But, despite these errors of a misguided few, there are needs of the unemployed, which require to 'bo met. An ugly spirit which may now be growing can be traced very largely to the fact that they have been unmet so long. It is mainly for the “ standdown ” wc.k that the mayor’s depot, based on tl;e pound-a-week scheme and assisted by the Hospital Board, affords relief. That is not enough, as rates of relief wages are fixed. Authorities for a long time past have called for the abolition of the “stand down” week. The Unemployment Board, we can conceive, has been unable to abolish it till it shall have more funds in hand. Those will be provided soon by the new Unemployment Bill which has now passed the House, but no prospect is held out, as yet, of continuous work except in the country, under Mr Coates’s scheme. It is only slowly that that scheme, for putting men “ over the fences ’’—off the roads and on to the farms—can come into working, and it will not suit all. Some men must remain in the town who would be useless in the country—the best place, it may be admitted, for others who only require a start to have chances there which the cities can never afford. For those who must continue to be town dwellers, either because “five acres and a cow ” would be starvation for them or until those can be found, something more must be done than is done at present. The onus is on the Government to do more. And the springs of private benevolence, naturally discouraged by an impending tax of a shilling a pound on wages, should not be allowed to dry up before that is imposed. The pound-a-week scheme is one that varies in its productivity. For some time past there have been no contributions to the mayor’s fund. It is not a good time for those shortages to be felt.