WASTE AND WANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17780, 13 May 1921, Page 4

WASTE AND WANT.

From their prominence at a recent deputation to Sir Francis Bell it may be inferred that some New Zealand Labour leaders are becoming genuinely concerned at the prospects of unemployment. In reply to the deputation the Acting-Prime Minister emphasised the scarcity of money. He might with advantage have gone further and shown the Labour men present that by their own action they have been reducing the capital funds of New Zealand from which the wages of labour are paid. Two outstanding examples may be readily cited: the drain upon capital through the importation of coal which might have been mined in New Zealand, and the loss caused by interminable delays in loading and unloading ships. The economic waste in these two directions must react on New Zealand as certainly as the economic waste of the war has reacted upon the whole world. If New Zealand had not had to scour the world for coal, if ships had been given reasonable despatch and we had been able to transport and sell great quantities of the produce now in store the Dominion would have been in a much better position than she is to meet a period of depression and. to find temporary work and wages for the unemployed. No Government can find emergency work for all who may be in need in hard times unless it has the means, and when workers wilfully check the accumulation of the funds from which wages are drawn they are making a rod for their own backs. Even now New Zealand is paying needlessly high shipping freights because its ports have earned an evil reputation for slow discharge of ships. The business of shipping must pay or it would not be carried on. If a ship by delays in port loses a trip a year the loss must be made up by higher freights. These conditions are now operating. Ships are losing trips and producers are paying high freights in consequence. So long as such waste goes on capital will accumulate slowly and the Government, having less to draw upon, will be less able to pay men wages for work which is not immediately remunerative.