WORK OR THE DOLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21030, 14 November 1931, Page 8

WORK OR THE DOLE.

CLERGYMAN'S VIEWS.

"COMPULSORY UNEMPLOYMENT."

A business man in Sydney remarked recently: "It is not often that there is any really illuminative deliverance on present conditions at church svnods, conferences, assemblies, and so forth; but I must say that the Rev. H. Steele Craik, speaking at the Congregational Union, made one of the shrewdest contributions to the main controversy of the moment." The portions of Mr. Craik's speech particularly alluded to were those in reference to compulsory unemployment as associated with the conditions attaching to the dole. "The Government," said Mr. Craik, "is forcing the people to live on a scale far lower than that which the average employer would provide for his employees if the Government would allow him to do it. Work would be forthcoming if the Government allowed men to work, but tyranny is the sort of weapon that seems to come naturally to one with the ideal of dictatorship of the proletariat."

Mr. Craik advocated work instead of the dole, believing that work, even for part time, would be preferable, as it would prevent the sapping of the moral stamina of the people and check further growth of the parrot cry:- "I've got nothing to lose but everything to gain" by the upheaval. "The brotherhood of man," said Mr. Craik, -"is far different as viewed by the Church and by Socialists."