TOPICS OF THE TIME.

Hastings Standard, Issue 59, 4 July 1896, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

That is a pitiful story which comes to us from Christchurch, where men were stated to have been without food or the chance of earning the money wherewith to obtain it. Some people say in this young country there should be neither lack of work or food; but the fact stares us in the face that there are hands that are enforcedly idle and bodies that lack sustenance. We are not of those who say that it is the bounden duty of the State to provide work for all, but when the principal local bodies—as in Christchurch — declare that they will not provide for the unemployed because it is properly an affair of the central governing body of the country ; why then it just comes to this, that we have a right to consider the position and find out, if Ave can, where we stand with regard to the starving men, and, it may be, the women and children who are dependent upon them. If these distressed .ones of the community go to the Charitable Aid Board for assistance, and obtain it, does not the money for their maintenance come out of the pockets of the local and general taxpayer ? Exactly. Well, then, where comes in the difference in providing work for these people and paying them out of the local and the consolidated revenues—getting a return for the money so expended—and the providing of food for them without securing a return in labor ? The difference lies in this : that if the local bodies and the Government both determine that work shall be found for all who have need of it, the cost will not be very much greater, but the result will be infinitely preferable to pauperizing the people by the issue of rations from out of the funds of the Charitable Aid Boards.

And it should be borne in mind that while we are disputing the point, human beings are suffering. Under such circumstances it may be asked, are we justified at all in debating the question ? Should we not rather lay aside all question of the bearing of polical economy on the point and prevent anything so dreadful as starvation. We ace quite willing to admit that among these unemployed men there are certain individuals whom to assist is hardly any charity at all; but that does not help us in coming to a righteous solution of the difficulty. The only question for those who are administering the public funds is: Can we, should we, stand by and allow men, women, and children to feel the pangs of hunger , and suffer from the winter's cold ? True it is that there are many charity organisations, volent homes, and the rest, the managers of which use every endeavor to prevent absolute destitution coming upon the poor of our cities; but, after all, these charitable organisations only act as a patch to cover up the misery. If we desire to remove a reproach from ourselves as a people we must set about the discovery of some system which shall prevent a recurrence of the unemployed evil. In Germany provision is made for relief by State farms and State industries of other kinds. All who. receive the benefits of these StateoigomSed forms o! relief give a fiki

pro quo in the shape of labor, and small sums are set aside for the workers so employed, the money so earned being handed to the individuals when they once again set out in search for other employment. But even this is not a satisfactory way of dealing with the difficulty. The fact remains that it must be infinitely better to absorb the whole of the. surplus labor on reproductive works than to seek to patch and patch and never succeed in really effecting any permanent improvement. It is argued that if to-morrow, the State were to provide work for all who needed it, the fact would be noised abroad and the colony would be rushed by the unemployed from the other colonies. Then all we can say is, that to get over the difficulty thus presented we should, as America has done, prevent the influx of paupers. That people in New Zealand should go hungry and almost naked is not creditable to us.