UNEMPLOYMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 5 August 1931, Page 3

UNEMPLOYMENT

(To the Editor) Sir, —Reading between the lines one gathers that' - some correspondents seem to rather regret that the discussion regarding unemployment seems to have virtually terminated. I suppose most of them, like myself, are saying to themselves, “What’s the use?”. In vievv of list week’s Budget the whole position has, of course, changed and changed for tjie worse. , In order to balance the national Budget tens of thousands of personal budgets will have to undergo radical review* in sortie cases amounting to a complete revolution in the domestic economy. These new and drastic impositions strike hardest those least deserving of being struck—the thrifty, the honest, arid the self-respecting, who by a lifetime’s work had hoped that they had reached a position of some security. For such it is clear that there is no security. People who have striven hard to get together, a comfortable home will now find the maintenance of that home a difficult problem. Every penny of the £350 or tlie £SOO a year hitherto earned has been accounted for in the year’s household estimates. That £350 or £SOO lias now been cut down by at least 10 peri 'cent, and in some instances a great deal more. On top of all this has been j placed this heavy taxation to make good a deficiency which their actions have had no hand in bringing about. The home will have to be given up—a flat or rooms in. future will have to do. The domes-, tic helper will have to look for a job elsewhere (and so swell the ranks of the unemployed). Tlie boy or girl who, through pincliin"' and self-denial, had been placed in a good school or college will have to be withdrawn. This and much more will be the lot of many—the very type who de'serve to be encouraged. And the end of taxation is not yet. This sort of thing grows by what it feeds on. Unemployment instead of being an unpleasant passing phase will become permanent. —I am, etc., OBSERVER. Nelson, sth August.