The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1906. THE UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13948, 3 January 1906, Page 6

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1906. THE UNEMPLOYED PROBLEM.

We do not know what strength the Social Democratic Federation lias in the Mother Country, or what influence it is likely to exercise on the course of legislation, but the policy it advocates is perfectly sound. “ Academic ” and “impracticable” are the adjectives usually applied to proposals for the alleviation of suffering. A few weeks ago a huge demonstration of unemployed carried a resolution in Hyde Park calling upon the Government to provide national works to absorb tlic surplus labour of the kingdom, and the newspapers of course lamented the tendency of such mass meetings to propose impossible remedies. Politicians prate about the inevitable “surplus labour” without which no industrial nation can carry on itsAvork, and the newspapiera learnedly classify the out-of-works as though classification would give them broad. And finally the Queen, out of the goodness of her heart, sets on foot a fund which is to provide food. and clothing for London’s starving thousands. A year hence the same story will be retold in the same words, except that the army of unemployed may be a little bigger or a little smaller. If this is the best that Britain’s rulers can achieve, the outlook is not a bright one. Year after year this great nation, boasting itself the wealthiest and most enlightened and progressive in the world, has had this,/unemployed problem to face and has not even attempted to find a solution. It is almost incredible that a great and civilised community should permit thirty per cent of its members to be living always on the frontiers of poverty and should do no more than maintain peorhouses and casual wards in case a bad season should send some of the poor into the region of absolute starvation. It would seem, to any sane colonial, to be the manifest duty of the State to provide labour bureaus and to collect and publish information concerning the demand and supply of labour in the various districts of the kingdom. Yet nothing of the kind is done in Great Britain. Though the labour market may seem to be oversupplieo continuously for years the Government makes no effort to relievo it by a system of emigration. And nothing is done to improve the case of the casual labourer who must always exist in considerable numbers in the largo manufacturing and shipping districts. When the unemployed in Hyde Park affirmed their right to labour they had justice on their side. The Social Democratic Federation proposes “ tlio cooperative organisation of the unemployed on the land, in factories, in building and in afforestation.” Some each scheme would undoubtedly provide a solution of the problem, but it would have to be coupled with some system of preventing the immigration of aliens likely to become a charge on the State. There are always great works in progress for which a Government needs labour, both skilled and unskiUod, but in addition the Govern-

ment should organise self-supporting farms and factories in which every subject of the State would have the

right to employment in dull seasons. It should be no part of the scheme to give permanent employment, and on that account the margin of profit would necessarily be small, but it is because the State can afford to ignore the profit consideration in an enterprise that it and it alone can undertake the duty of providing work fop casual labour in off seasons and for the unemployed generally in dull seasons. Some relief might be given to the congested towns by the public acquisition of some of the great estates. Intense farming on French and Danish models would surely be profitable close to so dense an industrial population, but the Government would have to give the people a lead. Successive ministries have shrunk from this greatest of Britain’s problems, and it appeals to the Liberals now for solution. No one doubts the sympathy of the Liberals with the poor, but it remains to bo seen whether the new Ministry will bo any improvement on its predecessor in initiative and courage.