Untitled

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 9167, 29 July 1890, Page 4

The inability of mere loan expenditure to keep the people of a country

permanently employed is now being brought homo to tbe Victorian population in the most convincing of all ways. It is a very bitter experience. Thousands of men are starving for lack of employment in tbe great city, the Pearl of the South. Repulsed by all the authorities, civil and religious, to whom they have appealed, they have been taken in hand by the Salvation Army. That the case is serious we know from the simple fact that the Upper House subscribed no less a sum than «£4ioo as soon as the Government decided not to start relief works. This money was got together at the very first sending round of the hat in the Chamber. It was literally flung into the hat, for it was at once forwarded to the Salvation Army with a complimentary reference to the work that body has taken in hand. The money is just a drop iu the ocean. No doubt there is more where that came from. There is plenty of realised wealth and ready money in the place. Likewise is there a large amount of goodwill and charitable readiness. But there are thousands upon thousands of people eager for work because they want to buy food. It is a case of “standing here all the day idle, because -no man hives us.” Charity cannot cope with the evil: it is too big for charity. The Argus newspaper takes the bull fairly enough by the horns, by admitting that there is no other way out of the difficulty than through the Salvation Army. It is of course charity, says the great southern journal, but that is a merely sentimental objection. The men must not be allowed to starve because there is nothing before them except charity. It is fortunate, the Argus seems to think, that there is some charitable organisation in the place to take up the case. Possibly, at no distant date, the leader of the Victorian Conservative opinion will take to cursing all existing denominations, reserving his blessing for tbe Salvation Army. At all events, the Army has never attained to such recognition in high places since it first set up its banners in these seas. All this is bad enough. But the reason given for submitting to the Salvation Army is absolutely appalling. Relief works, we read, would draw the whole population of Australia to the Victorian capital. It is a confession that all the Australias have somehow failed utterly to settle their people on. their soil. In the hour of the Victorian Jubilee and the New South Wales Centenary, the confession is deplorable, almost beyond power of realisation. It reaches the climax of evil suggestion when we reflect that these countries, if j udged by their exports and imports, are the wealthiest on earth. The smiling statistician tells us that the trade represents so much per head of the population —a remarkable figure indeed, which we need not quote here. The population contradicts the statistician by persisting in failing to find the men who will employ it. The want of employment, the Argus would have us believe, is only for want of the means of bringing employer and employed together. The Salvation Army having taken up that question, work will at once be found, and there will be an end of the difficulty. It is a transparent delusion.

The worst feature in the whole story is the sending round of that bat in the Upper House. We reverence charity whenever wo see it. This was genuine charity, and not only genuine but generous. Its exercise was, nevertheless, the most lamentr able feature of the whole episode. It was the spectacle of law-makers and rulers confessing that there was nothing left for a case of breakdown but the pocket of benevolence. Every hand that went into its owner’s purse and came out full with a contribution for the circling hat, was an eloquent testimony to the failure of the system on which Australia Felix has been so long governed. Truly that is a lamentable reflection, especially as it is corroborated by startling news from the other side of the border. The squatting monopdly over eight million acres in New South Wales having come to an end, there is a rush for land which has taken everybody by surprise. The lands have evidently been kept away from settlement; no wonder the people cannot find employment. There is reason to fear that there will be no improveof any radical order. It is always easier to devise a temporary remedy that will postpone a crisis, than to find a permanent cure. The palliative of another huge loan, with a rail way schedule of two hundred and fifty miles, is being arranged as fast as it can. Presently there will, in all probability, be more employment. But when the money is gone there will be again the same dearth of work, the same distress, the same prudential writing, the same sending round of,the hat among the rich—who, making money in the days of expenditure, ought to contribute something in the days of inevitable scarcity—the same recourse to the Salvation Army. In the meantime, the days of scarcity are on them in both the Australian capitals. For those who arrive from abroad in Sydney there is a public charity presided oyer by somebody with a close family likeness to the much-execrated Mr Bumble, la Melbourne there is the Salvation Army, with its charitable arms drooping for want of sustaining strength. The moral for our people is to stay in New Zealand. The moral for our statesmen is to make New Zealand a place in which the people can stay with permanent profit.