NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20760, 31 December 1930, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

DICTATORSHIP IN EUROPE

"The nineteenth century became the age of Parliament making. To live under an elective Parliamentary system was to he civilised and fortunate; to livo under any other system was to be barbarous and miserable. The end of nil despotic or oven arbitrary forms of government, and the riso in their place of ever more voluble and more powerful Parliaments, elected on evor-widening franchises, were assumed as part of the immutable dostiny of man," says Mr. Winston Churchill, in the introduction to an English translation of a book in which over 20 writers havo discussed the European dictatorships. "How different is the scene which confronts a cool and detached observer of to-day! Many of the Parliaments erected so hopefully throughout Europe in the nineteenth century have already been openly demolished or covertly set aside, 'lhe British oak, it appears, will not grow on Latin or Slavonic soil." Mr. Churchill instances Russia, Poland, Italy and Spain, and adds:—"Nowhere among the dictatorships of the Old World would our Victorian Liberal find any respect for the basic rights, comprehensions and tolerances of England under Gladstone or Disraeli. Nowhere in the New World, where the highest developments of party organisation have been reached, would he find that national family council with its long continuity of purpose that was the foundation of the British Parliamentary system and of British survival and success."

DOMESTIC SERVICE. Domestic service was recently described by Miss Margaret Bondfield, Minister of Labour in the British Government, as an honourable as well as a skilled occupation. Cordial agreement, with this opinion was expressed by the Times, which remarked: —For reasons that are fast disappearing, where they still linger, tho paid service of the home has lost much of the esteem and honour to which it is rightly entitled. A hundred years of factory life have wrought a curious revolution in sentiment. The factory drew men and women unwillingly from domestic industry, and occupation into common working places, but in the course of three or four generations factory work has come to be thought the more desirable. Particularly in the areas where tho textile industries aro established, and also in tho largo centres of commerce, there has long been a marked reluctance to undertake housework. Slowly that reluctance is breaking down. Domestic service is itself more attractive both inherently and relatively than it, was twenty years ago. Its conditions have, improved and, in comparison with many other occupations, it offers both greater security of employment, and, when tho week's board has been taken into account, a better net financial reward. Millions of women engage in housework with dignity as competent housewives —all the better for having learned it as a profession—and the same work does not loso in dignity if honourably done when honourably paid.

COST OF THE DOLE IN BRITAIN

The enormous cost of unemployment insurance in Britain and the fact that nearly 70 per cent, of it falls on the taxpayers were demonstrated recently by figures quoted in the Times. According to a supplementary estimate, the contribution of the taxpayer to the Unemployment Insurance Fund during the current year will be £36,970,000 —an increase of £10,500,000 011 the original estimate. These figures reflect the facts that the number of the unemployed' has increased by 1,011,000 in 12 months; that the number of persons employed has decreased by during the same period; and that the Government has appointed 5000 more officials to administer relief to the "human misery, almost impossible to contemplate," which Miss Lawrence (before taking office) asserted that a Labour Government could "cure within three weeks." The extra demand is caused only by tho increase in the number of persons who have not paid enough contributions to draw benefit from the insurance fund itself, and draw relief at benefit rates from the Exchequer vis the fund. Tho taxpayer is therefore properly warned that expenditure upon these persons "cannot bo forecast with any certainty," and that "it is stiil increasing." He has already been required to lend another £20,000,000 to the fund, and that the Government has promised to ask him to lend £10,000,000 more before tho end of the financial year. None of those loans can begin to bo repaid until the unemployed number fewer than 1,240,000, and they are therefore practically irrecoverable. The total expenditure v';n the unemployed this year will amount to about £97,000,000, of which £67,000.000 will come from the taxpayer and £30,000,000 from employers nnd employed. Next year (he charge will tie very much higher, unless thero is some totally unexpected decline in the volume of unemployment, or some chango in the present so-called unemployment insurancesystem.