The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST” THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1938. The Unemployment Situation

Northern Advocate, 26 May 1938, Page 6

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST”

THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1938. The Unemployment Situation

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper

T»HE “Advocate's” recent comments on the claim of the Hon. H. T. Armstrong that unemployment in New Zealand is now “back to normal,” find abundant and indeed disquieting confirmation in the report of Mi* J. 11. Elsbury, Placement Officer in Auckland, that unemployed single men in Auckland now number over 700, and that the total is increasing at the rate of 25 men a day. Mr Armstrong’s statement obviously Imre no relation to the realities of the time. The very existence of placement officers in every important town from Whangarei to Invercargill contradicted any suggestion of normality. In normal times there is no need of artificial agencies to find work for good men. The market should be a natural one, sound and steady, with, little ebb and flow. Nor should the State, except in times of deep economic depressions, have to maintain huge public works more to keep men off the unemployed rolls than because all such works 'are urgently necessary. Numerous works can be pointed out for which there is no immediate justification. One of the most striking examples is the Homer tunnel and the Milford Sound Road, of which it is a part. This is to be purely a sightseeing road. It will open up no new country and tap no known mineral or fcther resources. As a scenic road, it will be almost incomparable, but as an economic proposition it is, in relation to New Zealand’s need and population, sheer waste of money. The same comment applies to several railway ventures. That those were started by earlier Governments is no excuse to continually squander money on them. The East Coast railway north of Napier presents the most tragic picture of all, because the recent floods have practically destroyed several miles of it. This has happened in the past, and seems likely to happen again An the future. Men who should, if unemployment were normal, be in private employment, have been kept at work in many jobs such as these, and when such jobs finish, and they must finish sooner or later, there is nothing for them to go to, except farm work, and they have got out of the habit of going on farms. This essential occupation, one of the oldest in history, has become unfashionable through the practice of paying uneconomic rates of wages on public works projects. The farmer, as an employer of labour, cannot compete with Mr Semple. It is the private construction work—giving employment for labourers and tradesmen of .every kind and creating further indirect employment in many ways—that is grievously lacking today, and it will not be resumed on any scale of real importance until the business m'an, and other private individuals who provide the money for such Works, can be assured of stability and reasonable costs. Until private enterprise is given a chance, the placement officers will continue ,to receive their streams of workless men and Mr Armstrong’s normality will remain *a myth.