The Hawera Star. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1928. SOME FACTS FOR UNITEDS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 November 1928, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1928. SOME FACTS FOR UNITEDS.

Delivered every evemnir toy 5 o'clock la riswera. Manaif.. Normanby. Okaia'va, Eltham, JtaDgatoki. Kapomrn, Alton, Jnrleyville Patea. Waverlev. Mo„oia, Whakamara, Ohaneai, Meremer*. Frasef Bead, and Ararata.

Though, our attack® upon the policy of The United Pointy have earned for us ifche censure, o'f some members of that party, it is significant that s ! oi fax none ■has adduced. arguments' in rebuttal of . oux own. We are still the recipients of occasional letters, such as that printed to-day, in. which we are taken to* .task fox daring to express' am opinion. adverse toi the. claims of the United Party, but we axe still awaiting something more substantial in the way of argument .than the bare assertion that we are ‘ 1 one-sided. ’ ’ It is not our intention On this occasion to defend ourselves against any such attacks unsupported' by evidence; we merely refer to a/ very human tendency (to cry out for facts and then promptly ignore them when they are found to be unpalatable) as an introduction to the statement of a few more facts which the small abusive section .of our critics will again find unanswerable. Tin tihe course of the present election campaign the opponents of the Government .have not hesitated to make political capital out of the unemployment problem. They have ignored the real contributing economic factors, which arc world-wide in their influamcc, ainid halve chosen to lay the blame for thio position at the door of the Reform Party. Even Sir Joseph Ward himself has .not .been proof against the ternptatiotn to make every post a winning post in this connection. Indeed, at Christchurch the other day he went further in the making of extravagant statements than we have known any other partisan to .go. in the last few yearsduring which .unemployment has been a burning question. Sir Joseph Ward Is reported to have stated, in the course of his speech at the Christchurch Todlway station on Tucteday —and this time there has been noi correction issued -to the Press—“ What is the use of standing .by knowing that next winter wo will l have 150,000 or 40,000 anon unemployed ? " Wo will malice n'o ! further comment ,on that statement than to remind readers that, at'the Industrial Conference 10,000 was said to be the maximum number of unemployed—and at that conference the Labour unions were well represented. Now, it cannot be denied that the United Party has mentioned the. Government's immigration policy as partly, if mot wholly, responsible for the unemployed situation. It has been, stated that the Government “has swamped this 1 country with immigrants" and endangered the security •of the native-.born population. But what do official statistics tell us in this connection. In the first place, the curious doctor will find that during the last ten years' the rate of assisted' immigration has been 8.1 per thousand of the population. Some of our United friends may interject “too high," but they will be foolish toi do so, for the same authority shows that between the years 1903 and 1913 the rate per thousand was 8.9! Let us put the position another way. During .the war New Zealand lost 16,696 ' men killed in battle, and at least another 5000 can bo added to that number as being totally incapacitated, making the loss’ in man-power close upon 21,696. From 1921 to 1927, both yeaTS included, the assisted adult male immigrants who came to Now Zealand numbered 21,113. It will be seen .that actually we have only .replaced the man-power lost during the wot. Another fact which may give food for thought is One relating to the expenditure upon immigrants. Since 1923 the New Zealand Government has received £420,000 from the British Government ate contributions to passage mo,ney for assisted immigrants. 1 Out of this 1 fund £12,000 has been loaned to imimigmmts unable to pay their own passages and 93 per cent, of these loans has been repaid. We will leave it at that. *